


Put On Your War Paint

by FallOut_Paramore (JetBlackSunshine)



Series: Sixteen Candles [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Paramore
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - A Little Less Sixteen Candles (Music Video), F/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-09-03 04:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 51,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8696719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JetBlackSunshine/pseuds/FallOut_Paramore
Summary: They may have managed to defeat leader of the Dandies, William Beckett, but his second in command Brendon escaped, and he's found a new master to serve....
To make matters worse, a boy arrives on their doorstep of the warehouse, looking for Cassie, causing concern and problems among the hunters. Could he be holding a dark secret? It's up to them to find out. Meanwhile rumours of a cure begin to spread, sending the hunters in search of it, but with Brendon trying to throw them off on every corner the search becomes desperate. 
Sequel to 'I Don't Blame You For Being You', so probably read that first.





	1. Here We Go Again

**Author's Note:**

> So this story is also posted on Wattpad. (Along with the first book) I finished this book earlier this year but I'm working on editing it, so sometimes there might be a large amount of chapters posted and other days there might just be one or two. I actually have to remember that I'm posting it....  
> Anyway I hope that you'll enjoy it!

The loud hum of a motorbike fills the air, as I race through the city. I can almost taste the tension in the air. Not much further now, I've got this. On the horizon, I spot a large checked banner. Joe is miles behind me now, he'll never catch me at this right.

I hit the 'b' button on the controller violently utilizing my boost power as the bike crosses the finish line and the words winner, flash wildly on my side of the screen.

"Hah! I won!" I declare, as I pump my fist in the air, and in turn perform a well-earned victory dance.

I turn my head, to find Joe pouting beside me. He hates it when I win this game. Apparently, it has something about him being the best at it before I came along. Who knows, I just laugh at it.

"Patrick, swap with her," Joe yells at Patrick, I can hear the frustration in his tone. He wants to beat someone at it, I suppose.

"Sore loser?" I smile at him, as I hand Patrick over the controller.

It's been a few months since we defeated William Beckett, the now ex-leader of the Vampire clan, the Dandies. He was an evil vampire that had basically ruined everything. It's so strange to think that in a time not so long ago, I would have never believed Vampires existed and now I was one. Not that it was exactly something I'd asked for, I'd been dragged into it when my path crossed with the Dandy leader, one night just before my shift had ended. I'd managed to be rescued by the guys who trained me in Vampire hunting. Until I was kidnapped by Brendon, William's underling who turned me into a vampire, long story short, they managed to turn Patrick as well, a few days later. We kind of were forced into siding with him for a short while. Until the time that Pete stabbed, William, killing him. There was one thing about that night that we still failed to understand, how on earth Pete survived being staked in the heart by Brendon with a stake doused in holy water. You didn't just survive that kind of thing apparently. It seems almost like a bad dream, now everything is rather quiet and peaceful.

There were other Vampire groups in town, besides the Dandies but since we'd killed William many of them had fled Chicago in fear of us. We do still go out patrolling, but we're starting to find less and less vampires, either that or they're all in hiding. Including Brendon, who had been Beckett's right hand man, but he'd escaped when we'd defeated his master and when he thought he'd killed Pete. He'd once been friends with Pete, Patrick, Joe and Andy, but he betrayed them when he got turned into a vampire. It's been a little tough for them to accept, the room in the warehouse that was once Brendon's probably looks the same as the day he left them.

Unlike Brendon's old room, things have certainly changed around here, Pete's not as much of a jerk as he used to be, the two of us have become quite competitive. Patrick's been trying to work on a blood replacement, we haven't had much luck with that though, half of them are just resulting in us all spiting it straight back out into the sink. Joe and Andy. Since that night, they're both a lot faster, almost as fast as us, it's incredible. I have a feeling it might have to do with Patrick's song, but I haven't really mentioned it to anyone. Hayley and Taylor moved back to Hayley's house on the other side of Chicago, though they're both over here that much you'd almost think the two of them lived here. But, they left last week on a trip. They wouldn't say where they were going or when exactly they'd be back, but they said it would be soon. So now it was just Pete, Patrick, Joe, Andy and I left at the warehouse. It seems a little too quiet, the two of them being around so much had always made the place seem so loud.

And me? Well I'll let you work that out for yourself.

"No fair!" Patrick yells from beside me, at Joe and Andy, who are high-fiving each other. Something gives me the feeling they might have cheated somehow, but I wasn't really paying attention to see how.

I look to the screen and smile, Joe's side of the screen is flashing with winner, he'll be happy that he finally beat someone though.

There's a noise at the doorbell. I glance at Pete, who is sitting on the other side of Andy and he nods. It's game on.

I pull myself up, as quickly as possible, and race towards the door as fast as possible.

"Beat you." I smile at Pete, who gives a small laugh. William being gone, has really seemed to take the edge off him, he's not so much about revenge as he was.

I peek through the opening in the door. There's a guy standing at the doorway, he has thin dark black hair which is dip dyed red at the ends I think, he's probably only about thirteen or fourteen at the most. Part of the left side of his face is covered in blood, the smell of the blood hits me even through the door, I recline, jumping backwards onto Pete. Who snarls at me angrily I close my mouth, as my fangs extend, and I can taste the slight coppery taste of blood in my mouth, ugh.

I continue to stare at the door though, my thoughts catching up with me, on who exactly would be standing on our doorstep at this time of night.

"Earth to Cassie, who's out there?"

I remain quiet for a moment, then it hits me, and I manage in hoarse whisper. “...My brother."

"And you look like you've seen a ghost because?"

"He's covered in blood; can't you smell it?"

He looks at me skeptically, before his eyes widen,

"Shit. Joe! come here."

I look back around to the living room as Joe leaps from the couch, Andy following closely behind him. I see Patrick get up, but he stays in the living room.

I can't stop myself from thinking, why on Earth is my brother here, he's supposed to be miles away at some boarding school up state. What bothers me more is that he's covered in blood, he hasn't just tripped over and turned up here. Somethings happened.

"What's up?" Joe looks between us.

"Outside." Pete mutters.

Joe sighs, before peeking in the window.

"It's just a kid."

"With blood on h-" Pete begins to explain

"Who happens to be my brother." I add

Joe's mouth forms a small oh.

"Guessing you want me to find out what he wants then?" Joe sighs.

Pete looks at me, clearly because it's my brother it's now up to me. I can't exactly leave my brother out there when who knows what has happened, so I nod.

"I'm just going to go back here then." I whisper as I rush back around the doorway, I don't particularly want him to see me like this, especially if he's covered in blood. A few seconds later, I find Pete standing with me and Patrick walks over to us.

I hear the door creep open, and I peak around the corner for another look.

"H-" Joe begins.

"Is Cassie here?" He looks between them, before they can say anything.

Joe and Andy look back at me, cowering in the hallway with Pete and Patrick. I nod, there's no point hiding the fact I'm here at least, and there's no telling the trouble my brothers seen tonight.

"Can I talk to her please? I'm her brother" He speaks, his voice becoming higher and more nervous sounding as he talks. I figure to a stranger, Joe and Andy both look intimidating.

Joe turns to look at me.

What will I do? I don't want to have to talk to him! He's going to notice I'm a vampire, and then what will he think of me. I look to Pete and Patrick hopelessly.

Pete gives me a little push, he whispers, "You're going to have to talk to him sometime. Joe and Andy aren't going to be able to hold him off forever, now that he knows you're here."

I sigh, Pete is right. Hesitantly I take another step out into the hallway.

"Ah, hey Jake." I say, trying to act casual.

His face brightens, "IwasatyourapartmentandIwasattackedbyva-" He gushes quickly, so fast I can barely keep up.

There's a gust of wind through the door, and the smell of dried blood wafts properly my way. I quickly turn around, as I can feel my fangs protruding into my gums. This is not going to well. I could have sworn he'd said something about vampires.

"Whoa, slow down, first we better get you cleaned off.... now you know your sisters here and-" Andy mutters, behind me, breaking him of as Joe races to grab a towel of the bench. I'm going to have to thank them so bad for this later, "besides we don't want to attract any more vampires, do we?"

It appears I had heard right, just wait until he finds out I'm one too....

I look away as Joe and Andy have him all cleaned up. I can still smell the faint tinge of blood in the air, but it's much better than it was.

"Now I'm clean, am I allowed to go near her now?" He looks at them. I can see Andy and Joe checking him.

"I think so,"

I nod.

He races towards me.

"I missed you, Jake." I smile, wrapping my arms around him.

He jerks away and stares, surprising me. "Y-y-y-ou. What did you do with my sister?"

I freeze, he's joking, right?

"I am your sister, you dork." I roll my eyes at him, trying to play it off.

He looks at me and declares, "You’re a vampire."

Dammit, how did he pick up on me so fast? Oh shit, I'd smiled, hadn't I? Even when my fangs weren't fully extended, they were still a tad longer all the time. I sigh, I can't deny that, "Yes."

He stares at me, thank god, he hasn't tried to run yet. He looks at the rest of the guys standing around me. I notice that Andy and Joe are blocking the doorway.

"What about them?"

Joe raises a hand, quickly, "Well, as far as I know I'm human...."

Andy nods. "Me too."

Patrick and Pete remain silent, before Pete finally sighs, "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

Jake glares between them, clearly having worked it out "It does, if either of you did this to my sister."

"Jake quit it." I yell at him, "It wasn't their fault okay. They saved my life, they're vampire hunters, all of us are. If you need someone to blame, it's Brendon"

"And you expect me to believe that?" He asks.

I sigh, I've had just about enough of this.

"Look, are you going to attack me, like those Vampires at your apartment?"

I shake my head, "No, I don't even know how that happened. Why were you there anyway, I'm sure I sent you a message telling you I didn't live there anymore?"

"I didn't get it, just like the message, I sent you that said I was coming home from school for the week. Didn't you get that?"

I shake my head, I haven't had a text or email from anyone other than the guys or Hayley for weeks.

"I think you need some time alone together...." Patrick suggests

I nod at him gratefully, as the four of them move into the doorway. I know they'll be eavesdropping.

Jake and I sit in silence for a few moments, I can see him examining my face, I know what he's looking for, all the things that make me a monster now. It makes me sick.

"So, what happened?"

I somehow manage to tell him most of the whole story, all about William and Brendon. I chose selectively to leave out, my part in assisting them. I leave out Hayley, Jeremy and Taylor, he doesn't need to know about them just yet.

"I'm sorry." He says, when I'm finally finished.

"No, it's alright I should've told you."

Though how exactly did you tell your brother via an email, by the way I'm a vampire now?

"What a waste of time this all was, it's too late to get a bus back to the school."

"You can stay here."

He looks uneasily at Patrick and Pete, for a few moments. Even though I've explained everything to him, he still doesn't seem to trust them.

"Okay."

He's asleep within minutes, it must have been a tiring night. I tuck the sheet over him, feeling an odd sense of nostalgia from it. When we were younger, before he'd been sent to boarding school, I'd do just this.

"Any idea how long he'll stay?" Andy asks, from straight behind me. I quickly realize that I've been staring.

"He said he was supposed to be here for the week, but after what's happened who knows.... knowing my luck if I send him back to school, he'll go around telling the whole school his sisters a vampire."

The guys look at me, "We can't have him going around saying that."

"I know, I'm still working on that part." I sigh. "Anyway, more importantly, he said he was attacked by a vampire, any ideas who it is?" I ask them.

Pete shakes his head, "The only clan left around here is Travie's lot and they wouldn't be hanging around your apartment. I'd doubt they'd even know where it is."

Travie, was a new-found ally, since they'd defeated Beckett. Provided he kept his lot peaceful, we didn't attack them. I don't know how Pete had managed it, but he'd tried to talk to the leaders of the other clans.

Joe sighs, "Unless, there's a new clan of Vampire's in town, it's possible, right?"

Patrick nods, "It's a little too much of coincidence that they'd be hanging around Cassie's old apartment though. It would have to be someone that knew that her brother might be going there."

"Someone must have been intercepting our messages, to know I wasn't there, and that Jake was coming to visit." I sigh.

"I think I know who it is." Pete looks around at us.

We all look up at him, how would he know.

"I think Brendon's in with them." Pete declares, "He'd be the person that would know about where Cassie lived. It's too much of coincidence he'd be hanging around there."

"You'd think he'd have come here though, how would someone have known about Cassie's brother." Andy sighs. "He's probably out for revenge, right? That's what you vampires do right?"

Pete sighs, "Yep, and it's precisely what I'm afraid of."


	2. I've Got A Dark Alley and A Bad Idea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't too sure if anyone was reading this so I hadn't added to the edit of this for a while.   
> If you're reading this, thank you and I hope to have some more chapters up for you to read of this soon! ^^

The next evening, Joe, Patrick, Andy and myself are sitting at the kitchen bench. The four of us are silent as we're wrapped up in our work. Beside me, Joe and Patrick are looking over a newspaper. Whilst on the other side of me Andy's drinking something that I can't decipher it smells odd so I decide against asking what it is. Meanwhile, I'm sorting through a pile of report files Pete found a few nights ago outside the police station. We were curious as to why they were throwing them out as all of them seemed to have a link to vampire attacks. It was my job to decipher them all. It was exhausting, but we needed to know why they were being thrown out as they were. Was someone trying to hide or cover up something?

I pull my head up in alarm as I hear a noise behind us. I hear a groan and I turn around to find that Jake is waking up. He sits up straight, looking over the side of the couch.

"Morning." I grin at him. "Did you sleep okay?"

He nodded. He stays in silence for a while seeming to fidget with the material on the sofa. Deciding that he seemed fine, I start to turn back to my paperwork, when he says, "Can I ask you guys something?"

A strike of nervousness shoots through me, as I glance at the others who are turning to look at him.

"Like what..." I say slowly.

"Well, I've been thinking," He begins looking between the four of us. "If you’re all hunters then, you should teach me to be one too. I’m still in Chicago for two weeks until school goes back. You should teach me everything I need to know."

I don't know why, but I don’t like the idea of my brother being a vampire hunter. I knew better than anyone the consequences this could have if he became too involved. Do I really want my brother to learn what we do? What if he goes back to school and uses this stuff on someone? It's not exactly child's play. I'd feel way too responsible if he did the wrong thing.

"I don't know." I say quietly.

***********

"So, he wants to learn how to be a vampire hunter in a fortnight." Joe laughs, a few moments later when we'd sent Jack out the room so we could discuss the idea.

"Though if he's related to Cassie, he could be almost a natural at it. Maybe he has Hunter Blood too?" Patrick suggests as he pushes the newspaper around the desk.

"Not a chance, the poor kid can barely hit a ball in softball even when it's sitting on the tee." I tell them.

Patrick looks at me, "Hey, I was like that..."

Joe laughs, "Yes, I remember when you did that, the teacher made someone else go in and hit it for you, and then made you run the bases anyway."

Patrick blushed, “My point is that just because you’re bad at sports doesn’t mean you’re not a hunter blood.”

Joe stops laughing, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

"Well I say we teach him at least something while he's here, who knows how much the vampires that attacked him know about us." Andy shrugs.

Patrick looks at me, "Cassie, this is your choice though. He's your brother, you must know him better than any of us."

"It would be good if I can say goodbye to him knowing he has a chance of defending himself." I tell them, "But, what worries me is he could use his training on someone at school."

"That is true." Joe sighs

Andy nods, "But if they do know he's your brother and they're trying to use him to get to you. There is every possibility they could attack him again."

This was such a difficult decision to make, but I found myself nodding. "I guess you're right Andy, just in case I think we should at least teach him something."

We call Jack back into the room and tell him we would train him. I hadn't expected his reaction, he bounced around the room as if he had won the lottery, he was enthusiastic at least. I start to regret my decision a little when he trips over the edge of the sofa, but decide not to try and go back on my word.

Even though he was my brother, for the rest of the night I try to keep my distance from him, there was something unusual about having him here, I just couldn't quite place. Maybe he was hunter blood like us, but after knowing how klutz my brother was, I wasn't quite into believing in that one. There was no way that I was sharing a room with him, like I had with Hayley and I knew no one else was going to want to have him, once Pete woke up I forcibly made the guys help me clean out Brendon's old room for him. I mean he wasn't going to come back anytime soon, so why should we save the room for him. It was helpful being the one that didn't care about the guy.

The phone begins to ring noisily on Patrick's desk. He races over towards it, picking it up.

"Hello?" He calls, his brow furrows and I know something's wrong. Andy and Joe are watching him carefully.

"Yes, I understand thank you."

He puts down the phone with a click, before looking up at us, "There's been some reports of Vampire activity down the avenue."

"We should check it out there hasn't been much going on lately." Andy nods.

"I agree, hopefully it's not someone new." Pete mumbles.

We're already starting to head towards the training room to grab some gear, when a soft voice breaks though the rustle.

"Can I come?"

The five of us turn to look at Jake. Why? He has no training, he really can't come with us, but we can't exactly leave him here either.

"Uh...."

"I guess we can't leave him here, the warehouse still isn't that secure..." Joe whispers, voicing my concerns.

I thought of the way the Dandies had managed to break in here all those months ago. I wouldn’t put it past them to try it again. Would someone do exactly that to my brother? If someone was after him, of course they would. Maybe he could come and just stay in the car or something.

"Alright, Jake can come." I sigh.

Pete gives me a look, that seems to ask why I would do such a thing but he shrugs and continues to walk towards the training room.

***************

Half an hour later, we arrive at the avenue that Patrick received the report on. My brother follows us out the car.

"Nope. Back in the car Jake. We said we'd bring you, we didn't say you'd get to help." I announce.

He stands their arms across his chest firmly. "You're supposed to be training me, right? Can't it start now?"

"No way-" I start to tell him.

"That's okay I'll keep an eye on him, he can see what we're up against." Pete shrugs.

I glance at him uncertainly. Pete gives me a sympathetic look, “It’s okay. I’ll look after him.”

I sigh, why can’t I ever say no to Pete. I nod, and mutter a small thank you.

"Okay, let's split up then. Andy, Jake and Pete. Patrick, Cassie and I." Joe announces, when he seems to sense that Pete and I are done.

I don't necessarily want to leave my brother, but at least I know that Pete and Andy will take care of him. So, I nod.

We follow the streets along. The first signs of life I notice are a group of human girls who walk past us giggling. I look around noticing people happily sipping tea and alcohol in various bars and cafes along the strip. Everything seems completely normal, perhaps it was a false alarm or we were too late.

"There doesn't seem to be anything going on around here. Maybe the report was false." Joe says.

Patrick's looking at its phone, "It's definitely supposed to be around here though, and the voice on the end said that they looked pretty comfortable like they'd be here for the night. Still, I suppose they could have left already?"

As Patrick continues to talk a dash of red light catches my eye. For some reason, I feel drawn to it.

"I'll just be a second." I mumble to Patrick and Joe. They both look at me quizzically and I don't look to see their answer.

I take of at full speed after it, running around the corner, and into the alleyway, I can see a shadow climbing up a metal fire ladder on the side of one of the buildings. Someone sneaking into their apartment late at night? Maybe I should go back to the guys, but then I might lose this shadow. Something is pulling me towards them.

Instinctively I follow them up, my foot slipping on the railing. I slide down a little. I attempt to pull myself up, I swing back on to the ladder.

"It's not too easy, is it?"

Huh? I look up to see that the shadow I was following has stopped at the top of the railing. In the light, I can see that he is a guy with a red hair. When he smiled, I spotted the small points of fangs glittering as they hit the moonlight. it was obvious he was a vampire? Could he be part of the clan we were trying to find?

"Here let me help you." He put his hand out towards me.

 _Far too charming?_  I hesitated, but there was something about the look in his eyes that made me trust him.

I put my hand out and he pulled me easily up the remainder of the ladder. We fell together onto the top of the rooftop. I blushed as I pulled myself off him. He let out a small chuckle. I could see his face properly now, he had dark eyes but a charming smile that contrasted with his red hair.

"That could've ended quite nasty, even for you. Lucky, I was watching, little vampire girl." He smiled, flashing a charming smile, "You were trying to follow me, right?"

I nod, trying as hard as I can to ignore the fact he'd called me little vampire girl. I knew I wasn’t that tall but I hated being called little.

"You’re one of those hunter bloods, aren't you? The ones that destroyed the Dandies?" He smiles again, his eyes watching me carefully.

I freeze, how did he know who I was so quickly.

He laughs, "Don't look so surprised. You're all the talk of the town, everyone either wants to kill you or love you lot for killing Beckett for us. It's not like we weren't all wanting to do it ourselves, he had it coming for him eventually."

I start to open my mouth to reply with some witty when he pauses, raising his hand and moving into a standing position in a single breath.

"Farewell, hunter girl, I have to go now" He pulled my hand from in front of me and kissed it. The he was the shadow again, disappearing off into the distance.

"What's your name?" I call, but he was gone.

I peek back down into the alley way and realise that Joe and Patrick are standing down the bottom of the ladder. They’d have to have heard some of that, well at least Patrick probably would’ve and then relayed the whole thing to Joe.

"Cassie, who the heck were you talking to? Why did you run off like that?" Joe demands, as I climb back down the ladder.

"Uh...some guy...I thought he looked like someone I know, but he wasn't." I explain brushing myself off as I land on the ground.

"You could have said something." Joe frowned, “You’re turning into Pete, by running off in the middle of a mission.”

"I thought I'd lose him, if I said anymore. Sorry."

"Doesn't matter, turns out the report was false anyway. I've called Pete and the others back to the car. Let's go home." Patrick sighs, looking slightly frustrated.

I looked behind me, and swore I could see that guy standing up on the roof, he was smiling. 


	3. Sometimes We Gotta Risk It All

I lay still on my bed; staring at the ceiling. The sun had long gone down, so I could probably get up if I wanted to. But that required effort, and for the moment I wasn't feeling it. I'm pretty sure I heard the car start up. I remembered Joe and Andy saying they were running low on groceries so that was probably the reason for it. When you lived on a nocturnal schedule there wasn't a lot of time for buying groceries.

I thought of that guy I had met last night, he still lingered in my thoughts. It reminded me of how I felt after I first met Hayley, but something about this guy had me. I didn't even have his name, let alone anything about him but that short meeting had sparked my interest. I guess it was odd to have found another Vampire hanging around when so many of them had left, which in a sense made me dislike him. I couldn't help but wonder where he had come from. More to the point how had he known we were hunters and who we were. I couldn't bring myself to tell the guys just yet that I'd met him and had a conversation. I knew I couldn't hide it forever, if he did happen to turn up again. Maybe I might never see him again and it wouldn't even be a problem.

Why were vampires so damn complicated?

Slowly I pulled myself out of the bed, I dragged the curtain open slightly. As the moon hit my eyes, I sighed. It was as close as I was ever going to get to sunlight these days. Shutting the curtain in disgust, I went to my drawer and pulled out some jeans and a black and pink striped t-shirt and headed out my door and into the corridor.

As I entered the living room I noticed that Pete was lying on the couch reading book, by the pictures on the cover I assumed it was a comic.

"Morning, Pete."

He looked up, before returning straight to his comic, "Oh, Hey."

I plonked myself down onto the couch opposite side to him. Watching him, I suddenly felt guilty. I couldn't go through this without saying anything about meeting that guy, what if it turned out that he knew Pete or something.

"Hey, Pete do, you know any vampires around here with red hair like you know besides Hayley?" I ask, trying to keep my voice as calm and level as possible. I didn't want him to get suspicious just yet.

Pete looks across at me, looking back up from the comic, "Okay who have you been talking to, now?"

My tongue shook over the words, "Uh, no one. It's just I thought I saw someone and..."

There was a loud crashing noise that came from the doorway, immediately I looked up to see Andy racing in the door, his breathing was heavy, he looked like he'd run a mile.

"Gosh were the prices while you were out buying groceries that frighting?" Pete jokes, as he looks over the sofa at him. "Or not..."

He raised his arm out, and I couldn't help but gasp because there were two puncture wounds on his arm."Of course not, Pete a vampire tried to attack me."

A vampire? My thoughts instantly flash to the guy I'd met the night before. Nah, it wouldn't be, would it? The only other possibility was that Brendon had come back but Pete had seemed to reckon it would take him another century before he showed up again. Now, I was starting to not feel so sure.

"What did he look like?" I ask, trying to remain calm. I didn't want them to think I knew anything about it. Was it possible that the guy last night had attacked Andy?

Andy shook his head, "I don't know, I missed his face."

Pete groaned.

He crossed his arms, "Shut up Pete! I had like two seconds to react, you try working out someone's appearance when all you can see is fangs coming towards you."

"Andy! Are you alright, I could hear you talking from down the hall?" A voice speaks. It's clearly Patrick's as he's the one poking his head around the corner, he must have been in his room. Joe appears right behind rubbing his eyes, so clearly Andy had gone shopping alone this morning. I couldn't help but feel we'd started to grow just a little bit complacent about the vampires. Andy and Joe never went shopping alone, even for groceries.

I bring my attention back to the room, and I can see Joe and Patrick are already fussing over Andy like mother hens. _How many people does it take to help Andy cover a wound?_ I think to myself. Oh well, at least it means we're getting better with blood now. There's three of us in the room, and none of us are going crazy over it. It's an improvement.

I felt the seat move next to me, I looked to find that Pete was sitting beside me now. He held my gaze and looked me right in the eyes, "You weren't kidding when you thought there was another Vampire in town were you?"

"Not at all." What worries me the most is that I'm not lying on this one. There's another vampire around and whether he'll help us or not is another question. Unfortunately, not all vampires are like us, so it's not too easy to tell who's good and who's not.

"But how did you know?" Pete asks.

I should've seen that one coming, time to deflect him, "Look, Pete. I don't know. Anyway, I think I need to get out of the room for a moment." I nod towards Andy, hoping that I'm doing a good enough job of lying.

"Oh," Pete nods, "I guess we'll talk about it later, then."

I nod, I'm not bringing it up yet.

I walk into the kitchen, I listen in silence as the others leave to fix Andy up in the bathroom. I fetch the tin of coffee. When there's a ring at the doorbell. I pause, I can't hear anyone else racing to get it, I'm in the kitchen which means I'm also the closest, so I race to the door. Carefully I peek through the hole and see three people standing outside. The orange hair kind of gives the first person away. A rush of excitement floods through me instantly.

"Hayley! Taylor!" I yell, as I scramble to let them in. "You're finally back!"

"Hey!" The two of them smile.

"Come in! Come in! Everyone will be so glad to hear your back!" I chirp happily, as I move to let them into the doorway.

"Where are they all anyway?" Taylor asks, as we walk into the living room. Pete's no longer sitting in there either. So, I assume he must have joined the let's fix up Andy committee.

I bite my lip, should I tell them about Andy being attacked by a vampire? I don't really want to bring them into something that they don't really need to know about, but it could be important to them. "Andy was attacked by a vampire this morning at the supermarket. He's okay, I think there all just patching him up."

Both Hayley and Taylor's eyes widen, neither of them speaking a word.

"Another vampire?" Hayley squeaks, "Wait, I thought we'd gotten rid of all of them besides us."

"It appears not, hopefully they're just passing through." I shrug.

She sighed, "Well anyway that kind of brings me to the point of us coming here, we have something to show you guys."

Something to show us? Before I could say anything, she pulled a thick, blue book from her shoulder bag. As she opened it, it quickly became apparent that all the pages were all torn and frayed. I wonder what was in here that was so important. She stepped back, as she put the book on the table in front of me. I scanned over it, I couldn't believe what I was reading, it couldn't be possible could it? Yet those few words leaped out at me from the page.

I looked back from the book and up at Hayley, "A cure to vampirism? You're kidding me, right?"

Hayley's mouth begins to move, but she stops her eyes focused on something coming out of the corridor. I turn around to see what the problem could be. Standing in the hallway, was Jake who'd chosen the moment I didn't want to see him to walk in the room.

"Whoa, cool!" He yells, alerting to me that he'd heard what I'd said.

"When did this little human turn up?" Hayley points at him, her face full of confusion.

"Shh...he's my brother okay." I inform her, gesturing for her to put her hand down.

Hayley formed a little oh, before turning back to me. Distracting me from introducing Jake to her, "So what do you say? Up to finding it with me?"

If she was right, this could be astronomical, I could finally be human again. I'd be stupid if I didn't at least give it a shot. Sure being fast was awesome, but no sunlight and having to drink blood were major issues with our situation.

"You think that we could?"

She nods, "Yep, the instructions on where it is are all there. Are you with me?"

"Of course, and I'm sure Pete and Patrick will be as well." I nod, "How did you find out about this anyway?"

"A place down south, we met with some woman, Taylor had heard of that lived down there and she gave it to us."

It sounded, a bit sketchy, but sometimes you just had to take your chances. Besides I trusted Hayley enough by now to know there was a good chance that she was onto something.

"So, was this what you went away for?" I ask, it did make sense now that they'd come back with something.

"Yeah, we decided not to tell you we didn't want to get your hopes up and then come back with nothing." She nods.

I remembered, I still hadn't introduced her to Jake, "Anyway, this is my brother, Jake..."

I turn to look at him, only to find that Jake's no longer standing behind Hayley. I look around the whole room, where did he go? He was only here a few seconds ago.

"Hey Jake!" I call out, hoping he'll hear me.

Hayley and Taylor look worried, and I see both their eyes scanning the room for him.

I hear footsteps, and consider the hallway to find that Andy is walking out of the hallway holding a note with scrawly writing.

"I think, Jake's gone." He says, the look in his eyes alerts me to the fact that somethings wrong.

My stomach sinks, he must be kidding.

"Wait, what? He was just here a few seconds ago?""

It felt like someone had staked me, as my eye scanned over the piece of paper. Gone? How could he just take off like that? Even worse the letter said, don't try and come and find me. I couldn't comprehend what was going on, I dropped the letter. Maybe if I was fast enough, I could catch him.

Pushing past Hayley, and Andy I quickly race outside, "JAKE!" I yell, over and over.

Still no one replies.


	4. Drop A Heart, Break A Name

  
I paced impatiently around my room. Jake still hadn't returned. Why would he do this? Why didn't he have the decency to say a proper goodbye. For some reason, no one had let me go look for him. I'd almost broken a chair and a mirror over it in my rage. This was so stupid, that they wouldn't let me do a thing, by now he could be halfway across America! I could've found him, sure there was no trail left, but I would've done it. I guess that might have been the reason they wouldn't let me look. It was odd for a human not to leave a trail of some sort.

While I'd sulked in my room, in the hallway Hayley had explained to Pete and Patrick about the cure, but it didn't exactly help my mood.

"Maybe we should just go now," I heard Pete say, "and by the time we come back he'll be here again,"

Leave now? When my brother was god know where, I stopped mid step, glaring at them, I was about to give Pete a piece of my mind, when Hayley's hand stopped me.

"Pete does have a point, we're not achieving much with you pacing Cassie, and the note did say he didn't want you to find him, so there's no use in that unless you want to make him more upset." Hayley speaks in a soothing tone.

Hayley was right, I wasn't achieving much by pacing was I. He was old enough by now that his older sister shouldn't be chasing after him when he runs away. There wasn't a lot I could do about it.

"Alright." I sigh.

Hayley seems to switch completely, her mood quickly turning back to the mission she had planned.

"We've still got plenty of time before it gets light again. It should be enough time to get there? It'll only take an hour's drive." Hayley says. "I say we leave now."

Pete nods at her, Patrick looks a little confused but nods anyway. I shrug, I guess I've got to agree to this now, at least it'll keep Hayley happy.

"I'll go grab Andy and Joe and we'll be off then." Pete nods.

********************

I hop into the black car decorated with the white bat heart on the front, with Pete, Patrick, Andy and Joe. Hayley and Taylor take a second car, a yellow Honda that's parked in front of the warehouse. The plates are from another state and there are stickers advertising a rental company, making it obvious that it's a hire car. That must have been how they got here.

We take the road back into Chicago. The street lights, the only source of light as we follow them along the almost empty freeway. It's handy travelling at nine o' clock tonight, it's quiet on the roads and eventually we make at an exit into a small town.

I don't see a street sign announcing where we are, but we follow Hayley's car through rows of perfect houses and perfect streets. Wasn't really what I had in mind for a place that holds the cure to vampirism.

The car is quiet tonight except for the radio, which gives me time to think about what's going on with my brother. Why on earth would he do this? He knows now from first-hand experience what dangers were out there. I thought he'd understood what I was, and that I wasn't a monster. I sighed. He'd even left his phone behind, I'd tried ringing it, only to find it the only thing left in his room. In a way, it makes me think that he left in a hurry, but when that's the only object he left I'm not so sure. Surely, he'd take his phone with him?

Eventually Hayley pulls over and drives into a parking lot. We follow them, taking the park beside them. I find parking lots odd now, considering my first night vampire hunting had been in one. This one was much smaller. Joe ushers me out of the car and I stand with the others. I hear Pete lock the car.

"Follow my lead." Hayley says standing in front of us, when everyone is present.

We follow Hayley into an alleyway. I still don't like them too much either, like parking lots I've experienced just a tad too much vampire activity for my liking. I don't think it's helping that I'm walking in the back of the group with Taylor and Joe.

"Well, well. What do we have here?" A laughing voice speaks.

I freeze, who's that? It doesn't sound like any of the others. Before I react, I find I'm being pushed to the wall. I throw my free arm forwards, and make a punch for them. It dodges. I realise there wearing a beanie, so I pull it off. Finding myself face to face with a mildly attractive guy with blue hair. He snatches it off me in a blink.

"Alright pretty little miss, who do you think you are trying to take my beanie?" He looks at me, a challenge in his eyes. His pointed teeth shine under the flickering streetlight.

I step back, why weren't the other's reacting I couldn't deal with this guy on my own. He pushes me up against the wall. "I... uh..."

"Let me help you, what are you doing here, little miss?" He asks. "I don't trust other vampires walking around here, even pretty ones like yourself."

There's a loud cough, and his eyes dart to something beside me. His grip doesn't loosen though.

"AH! Hayley!" He yells, the hint of a smile on his face. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but Hayley looks just as excited to see him. Hopefully this means that he isn't going to hurt me.

"Alex." She smiles. I take a deep breath, as the guy looks over the rest of the group.

"Friends of yours?" He asks, before pointing to me.

Hayley nods.

He looks guiltily at me and pulls his hands from my shoulders releasing me, "Sorry," He whispers before he looks among us, "I'm sorry about that I thought there was a bunch of rouge vampires and hunters rampaging our territory. You can understand, that right?"

There's a few nods, and the guy seems pleased by this.

"By the way, I'm Alex." He extends his hand out to me, and I nervously shake it. He smiles back at me now, as if I'm an old friend.

We go onto to introduce ourselves to him. He seems to take us all in, with an interested look on his face. There's something intriguing about him.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, what brings eight hunter bloods, into my territory?" Alex grins, looking at Hayley.

"The cure." Hayley looks up at him.

"Searching for the cure, eh?" Alex smiles, but I feel like he's eyes are laughing at us.

We all nod.

"Does it really exist though?" Patrick asks.

"You can bet it does." Alex nods, "Doesn't always work though, but that's only a minor detail. If you want it, you need to work for it though."

"You know all about the cure?" Pete asks him, a sceptical look on his face.

"I know a little, haven't tried it myself though, too risky." He smiles. "Besides, what I don't know I make up." Pete frowns at him, so he adds, "Just kidding."

Too risky? What could be so risky about a cure for vampirism? I hadn't really thought of that, I guess there could be side-effect. Until I found out what they were, I wasn't all that sure about this plan anymore.

"What kind of risks?" I ask.

"As I said, it doesn't always work." Alex shrugs, he looks at Hayley, "Anyway, so how have you been Hayley? I haven't seen you in months? Everything worked out I see?"

He smiled at Taylor, then back at her.

Hayley looks at the rest of us hesitantly, before turning back to him, "Yeah. It did, thanks for all your help, if it wasn't for you and Jenna I'm not sure what would've happened."

Okay, so from what I could pick up so far Alex here and helped Hayley out with something a few months ago. They were both being kind of cryptic about it, but I didn't want to pry. I wonder who this Jenna person is, I assume they must be a girl? I couldn't think too much more of it because Alex started talking again.

Alex smiles, "She'll be glad to hear your around, she misses having another girl here."

Hayley nods, "Where's all your merry men, anyway? Aren't they usually right behind you?"

Merry men? Who were they talking about now.

Alex nods, "You know me too well, Hales. They won't be far." Then he whistles, at first, I'm not sure what he did it for but then I notice three other guys appear from out of the shadows. I can't make them out properly in the darkness. It's all a little intimidating, then I remind myself that these people are Hayley's friends. I don't think they'll hurt us.

"This is Jack, Rian and Zack." Alex says, pointing back to the three men behind him.

They all nod.

I can see Pete watching them carefully, as he stands in front of me. I don't really think he likes them, but I guess Pete doesn't like anyone new. Alex was fine, but this seemed to put him off a bit.

"So, there's a storm coming tonight, and by the time it passes it'll be getting light out, I suggest you stay with us for the day, before heading off in search of it." Alex explains.

"I..." Pete begins, not looking too convinced by Alex's charms.

"It's no trouble," He smiles, "A friend of Hayley's is a friend of mine."

"Well I suppose it would be okay." Patrick shrugs, looking at Hayley.

"He's fine, Pete." Hayley nods, "Alex is a friend."

"Well, alright." Pete sighs.

The eight of us follow him and his group back to a door, behind antique shop. It has an ornate golden door handle, but other than that it just looks like a back room into a shop.

"Welcome to the castle." Alex smiles, as he unlocks a door.

I gasp, as my eyes trail around the room. He wasn't kidding it was like walking into a castle with this guy. The walls were lined with gold framed paintings, old style lamps were placed along the hallway. The carpet was a plush red, I was sure I could even see a golden throne up ahead. A TV sat on the other side of the room. How much money did this guy have? And what had we just walked into. 

 


	5. Echo Me In Circles

So, we ended up staying with Alex and his friends for the night. Their place was la total mansion, which surprised me because from the outside it looked just like an antique shop. There were no windows, probably to keep out the sun unlike the warehouse where we had to put up special blinds to keep the light out. Scarily, it also reminded me a little bit of Beckett's mansion that I'd spent some time in when I'd been under his control. Unlike Beckett so far, the extremely charming Alex had proved to be quite welcoming. He'd made sure everyone was comfortable. I was certain by now that he was the furthest from Beckett that anyone could be, and I was glad for that.

They had a lot of rooms, much more than the warehouse back home but most of us still had to share. Naturally, Hayley and I ended up in a room. Pete and Patrick were sharing as well but the rest of the guys had their own room.

Still, I can't sleep very well, every time I try to fall asleep I think of my brother, where was he? Why couldn't I have just gone after him? So, I decide to go for a little walk, sometimes that helps. Careful not to wake Hayley, I tiptoe from the bed and out into the corridor. With no windows, it's quite dark in here, even with enhanced eyesight. Perhaps I should just go back to bed.

No, I just need to get out of this room for a little bit. I follow along the hallway, walking slowly to the room that Alex had called the library and referred to the very comfy furniture that resided within it. It would be perfect for me right now, perhaps I could read a book and I might just fall asleep whilst doing so.

I clicked on the light. A figure leaped up in front. I leaped backwards, careful not to let out a scream.

Pete.

"Cassie? What are you doing in here?" He asks, looking as confused as I feel. What on earth is he doing out here? I know I am, but still.

"Uh I kind of decided to go for a walk because I couldn't sleep." I shrug, "Mind if I join you? Whatever it is you’re doing out here?"

Pete frowns, and I think he's about to kick me out when he nods, a smile on his lips. "No, not at all."

He takes a seat on one of the assortment of armchairs in this room, he gestures to the one across from him and I take it.

"I'm guessing you can't sleep either?" I ask him, when we're both seated.

"Yeah." He shakes his head, resting his head into his palm, "This is the first time I've really been away from the warehouse and tried to sleep somewhere since everything happened. I don't know why but this place is kind of throwing me off, it feels wrong."

"Really?" I ask, I'm surprised about that. Pete always seems so tough, it's strange to hear him talking like this.

"I know, it's a little embarrassing." He nods, "Last time I slept somewhere that wasn't was after, the guys kicked me out of the warehouse because they were afraid of me, when I first got turned."

No wonder he couldn't sleep. I had a feeling there was a little more to it than that though.

"No, it's not embarrassing." I shake my head, "That would've been scary, did that mean you had to sleep in the sun."

"Not quite, I managed to find somewhere dark enough to stay during the day." He sighed. "It was only one night though, I met them in town the second night. I'd been walking through the streets aimlessly, when I saw them. At first none of them would talk to me, they looked straight through me as if I wasn't there. Patrick was the first one to come around of course. He convinced the guys to let me come back to the warehouse. He tried so hard, on trying to make replacements so I wouldn’t have to drink proper blood, I tried all of them."

"It didn't work then?" I asked, no one had even mentioned them to me before. I think I probably would've heard of them by now.

Pete shakes his head, "No way. They were gross and had no effect."

I see. No wonder I hadn't heard of them.

"Things were better when we started hunting again." He sighed. “I had a purpose again and I felt as though I was somehow making up for everything that had happened.”

I nodded, that made sense. I knew how I had felt when I first started all this before I’d become a vampire myself. "How did you end up hunting vampires anyway?" I ask.

"I guess you could say it's because of both Hayley and Brendon that I started." Pete says, flatly.

Hayley and Brendon? That hadn't been who I'd expected. I wonder what had happened? It looked like Pete hadn't finished so maybe I was about to find out.

"Probably not who you'd expect. I started to think about it when Hayley saved my life from a vampire one night. She was incredible, a girl had tricked me getting me away from the rest of the guys and wanted me for a snack. Flying out of nowhere came Hayley who staked her right in the chest. She told me about the vampires before she went off with the rest of her hunter friends, I think Taylor was with them. Then a few days when Brendon's house was attacked, it was a real wake up call. The five of us decided to do something about all this."

The five of us? Did he mean Pete, Patrick, Joe, Andy and Brendon? I know they were friends but I couldn't really imagine Brendon fighting against vampires. I glanced at Pete skeptically.

"Brendon was a good guy, Cassie. However, when he became the way he is, something became twisted in him. Honestly I miss the way that he was." Pete sighed.

"I wonder what happened?" I ask.

"I ask myself the same thing, Cassie. I always thought it was because of William but now that he's gone, I just don't know why he's still carrying on like this." Pete sighs.

Brendon was a complicated matter it seemed.

"I wonder if we'd have been friends if we'd met before all this I wonder?" He asks.

"Maybe." I nod. "If we'd met."

Would I have though? I wonder what both Pete and Brendon had been like before they'd been vampires. If I'd met them under different circumstance would things have been different?

"I guess letting you stay with us after we saved you was one good thing I did, even though everything we saved you from happened anyway." Pete sighed.

"Yeah." Who would I have been though if this hadn't happened? I'd still working the lonely late shift at the coffee house most likely. I couldn't have imagined any of this, but I was glad things had happened this way. I couldn't imagine life without all of them anymore.

We talked some more about other things, before Pete said, "Anyway, I'm going to go back and try to get some sleep. Night."

"Night" I sigh.

After he left, I stay sitting there alone for a few moments. My eyes scanned over the books on the shelves but as I let out a yawn I decided against it. I take the journey back into the corridor.

That's when I feel myself run into someone, I scream, and a second girlish scream joins my own. A flashlight clicks on, I blink, it's so bright. They hold it up to their face and I see a girl with short green hair in front of me. She's probably a slight bit taller than me. What's she doing out here in the corridor? Wait, she's probably thinking the same about me.

"Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry." I squeal.

"It's okay." She smiles at me. "I shouldn't really be sneaking around here with my flashlight on anyway. I forget that Alex has guests here sometimes."

"Jenna?" A voice asks from behind me. I freeze.

The girl squints, and looks behind me, "Hayley? What on earth are you doing back here, I thought you'd sorted everything out?"

I turned around to see that Hayley was in fact the one standing right behind me. She glares at me, I think she must've heard me leave or she thought I was sneaking out or something. If she did she doesn't say anything.

"Well, for starters Alex tried to attack us...." Hayley says, her attention back on Jenna.

"Alex did that again?" Jenna sighs, before she can say anything more, "I swear Alex never tells me anything, marches to the beat of his own drum that one. I can't believe he didn't even tell me you were here! I walked straight past him only a few moments ago."

"Anyway, you must be here with Hayley, what's your name?" She asks turning back to me.

"Cassie." I nod.

"Nice to meet you, Cassie. I'm Jenna." She says, before looking at Hayley. "So, if everything's sorted then what are you doing back here?"

"We're trying to find the cure."

Jenna looks at her, "The cure? Hayley are you crazy or something."

"There's a book that says it exists, it's supposed to be somewhere near here, it's worth a try." She says back.

"Alex said it does too." I nod, feeling a little out of place amongst the two girls. They seem like they've known each other for a while.

She shrugs, "Suit yourself, but if it turns out to be another of those fakes...you know as well as I do how Alex likes to go along with these kinds of things for entertainment,"

There’s a moment of silence between the three of us. We were all worried that the cure was fake, but had a little more hope in it now that Alex had said it existed. Jenna was making me question it all over again.  

"Anyway, how have you been?" Hayley asks her.

"Not much has really been happening since you left. The guys have parties, I stay out of them. What about you?" Jenna says.

"Well William isn't around anymore...." Hayley starts to say.

"Ah, I heard about that! So that was you. I thought so as soon as I heard it!" Jenna smiles. "Gave that jerk what he deserves. I probably would've done it myself if I'd been up your neck of the woods. After I heard what he did to Hayley-"

Hayley shakes her head at her. Jenna looks confused. What was this about Hayley?

"Alright then..." Jenna turns her head to me, "If that's the case you must be the other girl they talk about, the hunter blood, right?"

Ugh, I was getting a little sick of everyone identifying me by that.

"Yeah, that's me." I say, flatly.

"Sorry, you must really hate people bringing that up. It's not a bad thing though." Jenna back-tracked, looking guilty. I suddenly felt bad about answering her like that. "Anyway, sorry to be rude Hayley, but I have to keep going. I'll catch up with you girls later."

With that Jenna takes off back down the corridor.

"What are you doing out here?" Hayley asks me, once she's gone.

"Couldn't sleep, though I could be asking you the same thing?" I say.

"I went looking for you, it's not the best thing when you get out of bed to find the girl your sharing a room with missing and nowhere in sight." Hayley replies. "Especially when said girl tends to attract trouble like a magnet."

"Sorry, I didn't realise you'd wake up." I shrug.

Hayley shakes her head, "It's fine. I'm sorry, I just- never mind. Shall we go back to bed?"

I nod, slightly suspicious of what she'd been about to say. "Yeah."


	6. Can't Go Around Thinking Your The Cure

We'd left Alex's place the next evening as soon as the sun went down. It seemed Alex hadn't been kidding when he said he was a bit of an expert on the cure. Before we'd left he'd pointed us in the right direction to it on the map. Apparently, the cure was in a cave out in the middle of the forest, just on the outskirts of this town. At least no one would bother us out there.

As we walked, the only noise around us is that of everyone's feet crunching against the leaves of the forest. I can hear Joe and Andy's hearts thumping steadily. It's obvious that they're nervous. I walked beside Taylor and Joe. Joe was looking off into the distance. He seemed a little distracted. 

It was incredible to think that by the end of tonight I might not be a vampire anymore. All this living in the dark over. I'd probably want to move somewhere where the darkness ever came, or did rarely for how much I'd had to live it in these past few months. I wonder if Pete or even Hayley would come with me?

Nope, I couldn't get too far ahead of myself. Even if we did find it Alex had said that there was a slight chance that it might not work. I didn't want to think about that possibility for even a second. What if it even worked for a few of us and not everyone. 

In front, Hayley and Patrick were leading the group. They had been put in charge of the map given to us by Alex. They had been arguing on the maps details and where it said we needed to go. Yet, we still seemed to be moving forward so I figured that was okay. However, what had me uncertain was that it seemed like we'd been walking for a little while, I was beginning to think that we'd gotten lost. Alex hadn't seemed to think from where we'd entered that there wouldn't be far for us to walk.

Taylor looked at me, "We're almost there don't worry."

He must've heard me thinking about it. It was tough being around a mind-reader sometimes. I trusted Taylor, so at least I knew we weren't lost right now. That was a comforting thought. 

Not long after that we came to a large cave in the middle of nowhere. I frown, noticing how it quickly fades into darkness. Even with vampire sight it would still be dark. I had a bad sinking feeling that it was going to be in there. I'd hate to think what creatures must live in there. 

"This is the cave I think?" Patrick says looking up at it and back to the circled map he held in his hand. Surely this wasn't it. I wasn't too big on caves, I guess I should've figured. Where would be a good place to hide a cure to vampirism? Somewhere secluded and hidden. It was stupid to expect that it might just be sitting out in the middle of the forest.

"Looks like it." Hayley nods, as Patrick folds away the map. 

Following behind them the group of us walk into the main section of the cave. I start to feel a little nervous, as I feared I can only see a few meters in front of us. It's kind of eerie, as everyone footsteps echo around the cave.

I try to keep watching for any sign of the cure while also watching where my feet are going. There doesn't seem to be much in here. I guess we've got the wrong place. That's when I spot a bright light coming from down within a rock crevice. Was it possible? 

"What's that down there?" I asked. 

Pete pulled to a stop beside me, his eyes following my own. He let out a small gasp.

"Stop everyone, we better go and have a look." Pete says, looking over to where I was, he's been walking along side Andy in front of us. 

Suddenly I find myself in the front of the group with Pete, as everyone crowds around us. Looking closer I could see a luminescent small object with a white glow even in the darkness. Was that it? I think so.   

"I think you've found it." Pete said with a grin. 

It was unbelievable. I couldn't help but smile. Right down there was a bottle, that contained the cure that would solve all our problems. It was like a dream. 

"I guess someone's just got to go down and get it." Taylor says from behind us. 

No one replies, it looks a little hard to get down to and I think everyone must be thinking about the same thing. We did being some ropes and things in the case of this, but I don't think any of us expected that it would require going into a tight enclosed space between rocks to get it. Even with vampire like agility it would be difficult. 

"So, who's going to go?" Hayley asks, sounding unsure.

Pete and I glance at each other. I think he's about to agree to get it. I think I'd be better at getting it though, we're both quite agile. However, I think I might be better suited.

"I'll go." I say nervously, jumping in before he can. 

Pete looks surprised but nods, "Everyone's fine with that?"

There's a few shrugs and murmurs from the group but everyone agrees to me being the one to go and get it. 

Andy pulls out a backpack and I soon find myself attached to a complicated system of ropes and harnesses. It reminds me of the time I went ab-sailing which is kind of like rock climbing but the opposite because you just need to get down to the bottom. I'd only done it once and I remember the teacher saying I was a natural. I guess some of those skills are about to come in handy. 

I take my position at the edge of the crevice. I'm ready for this. 

"Drink it as soon as your down there, only a little sip, save some for the rest of us," Pete says, just before I go, "We'll be able to get you back up regardless of what happens, we'll send a rope down to collect the bottle and then we'll bring you up so you don't have to carry it with you." 

I nod, this was simple enough. I had to admit, I was a little nervous about being the first one to drink it but sometimes you've just got to risk it. From what Alex had said the worst that could happen, was that it just didn't work. I could deal with that, probably. 

I hear echoes of good luck as they ferry me down on the rope. As I drop towards the ground, my head races through everything there is possible to distract me from the fact that I'm plummeting to the ground in a dark cave with no possible way of getting out if something were to go wrong. The thought of sunlight, being able to enjoy food, just being human spurred me on. I had to this for all of us. As soon as I feel my feet land on the ground and I'm able to move, I race forward and grab the illuminated bottle from the small rock pedestal it's sitting on. I find that it's cool to touch.

I can't help but think this is all just starting to seem a little too easy, why would no one have done this when someone first got turned it would've saved everyone a lot of trouble if it had worked back then. Why hadn't Alex done it considering he knew where to find it.

Pete had said to me to drink it straight away, I wasn't so sure that was the best idea. Perhaps I should wait until I got back up there with the others. Nope. Pete had seemed to think I'd be fine to get back up there human or vampire. 

I rolled the bottle in my hands. Well, here goes nothing. I pull the bottle up to my lips. It tastes kind of like water. Nothing special really. I think it must be slowly working though, I notice I can't see as well as I could a few moments ago. 

Before my vision can fade anymore, I quickly attach the bottle to the second line that had followed me and tug on it. I watch as the precious bottle goes up to the others. Any moment now and I'll get pulled up too. 

"With your powers dulled, now I can finally get rid of you." A voice laughs. 

Power dulled? What was that supposed to mean. Wait a second I know that voice. 

Before I can reply I feel my rope go slack and I hear something that sounds like a slash above me on my rope. It was too close it couldn't have been the guys up the top, how am I going to get back up? I spin around, standing there in the shadows is Brendon and the red-haired guy from the other night. That's not the end of it, in front of me, holding a sharp object in hand from cutting the rope was my brother. 


	7. Stressed Out

I'd never felt so betrayed in all my life until my brother went to stand beside Brendon and the red-haired guy.

I looked over him for some sort of guilt, perhaps even remorse but his expression was almost emotionless. He didn't seem to care that he'd just been part of something to hurt his very own sister. How on earth could he do this to me? My eyes met with Brendon's, there was only one person who could be responsible. Why else on earth was he working with him?! I was determined to find out.

"Jake?! Brendon!?" I yell, "What the heck are you doing here? Or maybe I should ask what you did to Jake?"

"Ah, Princess." Brendon flashes a cat like grin, "It was just too easy to plant that book for Hayley and Taylor to find, they took the information and ran with it exactly like they were supposed to. The real star here is your brother, it turns out he's a very good spy, he told me exactly when you all came on this courageous adventure. All I had left to do was wait until you made your merry little way here thinking it was going to cure you. As expected here you all are."

The reason my brother came to the warehouse was to spy on us? Had he really been attacked then or had Brendon just made it look that way? A thought hit me, how had he known how to come to the warehouse anyway, it was secluded and out of the town. When he ran away, he must have gone off to tell on us to Brendon, that's why he had said not to follow him. I wanted to hit myself for being so stupid, this had all been an elaborate part of Brendon's plan and I'd fallen straight into it. Quite literally.

I realised what Brendon wanted me to do was to react like this. He existed for this kind of thing, this was probably like Christmas day to him. I had to remain calm no matter what he said to me. I could handle this and somehow find another way out of here on my own. Clearly, they'd all had to come in some way themselves, the way I'd come couldn't have been the only one.

"You do realise the others are up, there right?" I say. "You won't get away with this that easily."

"Oh of course, I do. But do you honestly think any of them would be brave enough to come down and rescue you?" He said as he stepped in towards me, he had cornered me.

Would they come down here? It wouldn't be easy to get down here at all.

They had to, surely one of them would hear us and find a way down here. It didn't matter about everyone else though, if they came they came and if they didn't they didn't. For now, I realized I had to put up a fight, there was no use playing the damsel in distress down here waiting for everyone to come and help me. I could take Brendon on my own.

I quickly raised my arm forward and tried to punch him in the face. A sharp shooting pain went through my entire wrist, I winced, it felt like my hand had hit straight into a brick wall. Why was that? I'd done everything right, yet all that was stopping me was Brendon's hand that was held up flat. He'd barely even tried to stop me, but I couldn't seem to do it. Reality set in, he'd said right before he'd revealed himself that my powers had been dulled. Did this mean, my strength too? I internally groaned, it appeared so. That also meant, I couldn't fight back like I always had. Perhaps I should've waited until I'd gotten back up to take the cure. Why had I listened to Pete? Brendon was stronger than me again. I guess no one had factored in him turning up like this.

"Cassie are you alright down there, are you ready for us to pull you up?" I hear Pete call down to me.

They won't be able to do much pulling up considering my dear darling brother just cut the rope on me and Brendon has me cornered. Should I scream for help? No, it wouldn't do me much use, Brendon would stop me before I could.

"You have to lie, princess." Brendon smiles.

I glare at him. I hate having to play along with his game, but right now it's necessary, "Just give me a sec!" I call up to them, surely one of them will notice that the ropes not attached to anyone anymore. I'm running out of time, I've got to think of something.

"Hmmm, I made the mistake of turning you, Princess. Somehow you managed to become quite powerful, but now you're even weaker than me." He smiled, brushing my hair out of my face. I cringed, I didn't like being treated this way, pity I couldn't fight back right now or I would've. "Those powers of yours were supposed to be mine, but you and your little friends took them away from me as well."

"Brendon, I don't know what you're talking about." I say. Honestly, I didn't understand, what he meant at all.

"Sure, you don't. Well I want those powers I was owed back." He said.

What did this mean? What powers would those be exactly, I knew that as a hunter blood I must have an ability. If I did, I hadn't found it yet. Everyone else had one, I couldn't make people do what I wanted to purely with my voice like Patrick, Pete could electric shock people, Taylor could read people's minds and Hayley could understand other's moods.

I hear a loud thump from behind me, causing me to jump.

"You know we can hear you from up there. Get away from her Brendon." Pete yells.

I look around, it sounded like Pete talking was coming from down here. Don't tell me he'd followed me down here. If he did, he was an idiot. Sure enough, I spotted him pulling himself up from the ground. Did he jump all the way down here? It had worked a little though, I notice Brendon did in fact back off from me slightly. He was still a little close by my standards though.

"I know you took it before you came down here. You're not as strong now, Pete. I don't see how you can make me." Brendon grins.

I mentally groan, Pete had drunken 'the cure' too? I suppose he would've, if he'd told me to take it straight away he would've probably thought to do the same thing. I guess they must have thought it worked on me. How did he get down here safely though, if I could barely land a punch on Brendon how would he have jumped down into the crevice without injuring himself?

"You forget, I used to fight just as well without vampire abilities." Pete grins back at him.

With that he raced forward, towards Brendon. Kicking him right in the stomach. It was amazing watching him, it was true even with the ability level of a human he was still just as good. Why was I just standing here admiring him? I had to help.

I raced forward but right before I could get too far the red-haired vampire quickly dragged Brendon away, I saw him wink at me as they walked away. I grimaced, he had seemed so nice on the rooftop. Why did he have to be working with him of all people.

"Blimey Pete, thank you." I say. "You were an idiot coming down here though."

"No, I was an idiot for telling you to take the cure straight away, I should've known that b- guy would be behind this. It sounds like it only took away our powers and abilities. Thankfully I think it's going to wear off but still. "Pete sighed, he sounded exhausted, fighting Brendon like that and with our lessened abilities must have taken it out on him.

"Did anyone else take it besides you?" I ask him.

"Only Hayley. Taylor was about to but right before he did he could tell you were in trouble. They all tried to stop me from coming down here, but I did it anyway. As I said it was my fault you got caught up in it."

Wow, who would've thought I'd just been saved by Taylor's ability.

"I just wonder where my brother went, he was here with Brendon and the other guy but I didn't see him leave?" I say.

"Your brother was down here?!?" Pete yells, "But wait, what other guy?"

"You didn't see the vampire with the red hair?" I asked confused.

Pete shakes his head, he looked a little confused.

"Forget it then" I sighed, deciding not to continue it, a thought lingered, why hadn't he seen him? "Yeah I think my brothers working with Brendon of all people."

Pete didn't say a word, but the look of frustration on his face told me everything I need to know. I decided to change the topic, to our next problem.

"How do you reckon we get back up then?" I say, looking around the crevice for some sign of an exit.

"Wait, I think there's a whole horde of Dandies coming." Pete says. "I can hear them,"

When I listened carefully enough, I could hear what sounded like a large group of feet. I think he was right.

"Shit. How am I going to fight them?! I could barely land a punch on Brendon!?" I ask, feeling a hint of panic rising in my stomach. There was no way I could take a group of Dandies in this state. Any other day yes, today I didn't feel as though I stood a chance.

"I thought you were smarter than that." He grins, "Think back to the first days we met, you've got to fight like a human again."

It was like looking into a dark tunnel, it felt so long ago. When I'd first been training to be a hunter, I had been human. Well technically I was a hunter-blood but we hadn't known that at the time. My main technique had been dodging over actually fighting. I guess I could do it again. Wow this was going to be so weird, it was amazing how things had changed since then. More recently hand to hand combat had become more my thing.

Sure, enough as Pete had predicted an entire group of about seven or eight vampires were coming towards us. All dressed in bowler hats and vintage coats. They raced towards us, like a tsunami of people.

I gave one last glance at Pete, who gave me a re-assuring nod. Pete believed in me, I could do this.

I looked back to find that one of them was coming towards me. He crouched his knees before springing into the air like a lion on a hunt. Remembering the dodging part, I quickly slipped right beneath him. He just landed on the ground, I pushed him into the wall by the shoulders, I heard him make a surprised 'oh' noise. I smiled, I'd caught him by surprise.

I turned around looking for my next attacker to find that the remaining Dandies were surrounding Pete, who seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping them away. Nearby there were three dandies lying on the ground, clearly defeated already.

Why did the Dandies always underestimate the girls? It was so old fashioned of them. Well this at least made my job a lot easier.

I raced into help Pete, kicking a male vampire that was about to launch on top of him. It was amazing, how much better I was at this again. Perhaps my powers were strengthening again?

"Hey, you've still got it." He nods, giving me a high five in passing.

A small rush goes through me. If I can survive this, I can do anything once I'm back at full strength.

It is short-lived though, as I notice two of the vampires standing on the sideline watching me. One races forward, towards me, and the other follows. They grin at me.

I make it look as though I'm about to punch him but swerve to the side at the final second. Before going to come around to pull him at the back. When I'm stopped by the other vampire. He dragged me over to the wall pressing me against it, and dragging me away from the main-section of the cave. I struggle against him, but find it useless. The vampire grinned, his hand tightening on my neck. Pete will be back over here any moment, I try to tell myself.

"Any last words little hunter girl?" The vampire grins.

Even if I did I had nothing to speak. Well at least if I die right here, I went down fighting. Brendon hadn't played fair with the cure. I'd done all I could possibly do.

Suddenly, I hear a loud whistle run through the cave. The vampire hisses, before dropping his hand from my neck. He runs away in an instant, straight towards where they'd come out from. Had the whistle been some sort of equivalent to a surrender from the Dandies? I wasn't too sure. 

Beside me is the red-haired vampire, his hand just dropping from his mouth. I can't believe it, had he been the one to whistle? He walks towards me. I'm certain he's not on our side, perhaps I should run now but there's something in his gaze that stops me.

He smiles, exposing his fangs, "You know, there's a second way out of here, follow that path down and you should end up around the corner from the cave entrance."

I can't believe this, he's giving me a way to get out of here? But I thought this was Brendon's grand plan and I thought for sure he was working with him. What the heck changed in the last fifteen minutes?

"Why are you helping us?" I glare at him, trying to make my gaze as icy as possible.

"Things aren't always what they seem, hunter girl." He smiles, before he runs off into the shadows.

What an odd guy. Was he trying to help us or not because right now I wasn't quite sure what he was trying to do?

I walked into the main section of the cave, finding Pete in the middle of the room. He was kneeled on the ground. A neat slash went down his arm. I panicked for a moment, how badly had he been injured? Hopefully vampire healing would kick back in sometime soon and it would be fixed.

Pete looked up, a grin breaking out onto his entire face. I breathed a sigh of relief, he must be okay. If he was that badly injured he wouldn't be smiling.

"Shit, you're okay! I almost thought they'd taken you with them." Pete yelled, pulling himself up on his feet.

"Geez, Pete you think I'm that weak? I can fight like a human sometimes you know," I grin. Not letting on to the fact that the only reason we'd escaped today was probably owing to Mr. Redhaired vampire who seemed to be having trouble sticking to one side of the game. Which was kind of good and confusing as all hell at the same time.

Pete rolls his eyes, "Alright let's find a way to get ourselves out of here."

"Already sorted, follow that path and it should lead us to the cave entrance." I nod.

Pete looks surprised, "When did you become the know it all?"

"I have my sources." I grinned. I didn't want to say about the red-haired vampire. If Pete hadn't seen him when he was in the cave earlier, he didn't need to know about him just yet.

Pete didn't have time to say anything to that. As a voice yelled down to us, from the guys up above.

"Everyone alright down there?" It sounded like Hayley.

"Yeah!" Pete calls back up. "We've found a way out, should bring us up to the cave entrance."

"We'll meet you out the front of the cave, then." I hear a voice yell down to us, this time it sounds like Andy.

"Okay!" I yell up.

With that, Pete and I walk together along the dark, dimly lit tunnel in complete silence. It's kind of eerie like the part we first went through. I find myself sticking close to Pete just in case something else happens to jump out at us. It would probably be a less scary if I could see properly, but the cure it seemed was still working its vampire ability dulling magic. This tunnel seems much longer than the initial one. I start to wonder if this was some trap laid out by the red-haired vampire. I almost expected another horde of Dandies to be waiting somewhere along the tunnel. That's when I can see stars, and trees and people up ahead. Is this the end of the tunnel then?

The moment we leave the enclose of the cave. The group seems to notice us, and a few waves break out among the group. I see an orange haired figure racing towards us.

"Thank goodness! Pete, Cassie! You're okay!" Hayley yells, as she races to us and wrapping us both up in a massive hug. I notice Pete behind me frowns at first, but it slowly creeps into the hint of a smile. "There were all the noises! We were all so worried! Then Pete jumped in there and he didn't come back out and-"

"Hayley calm down your smothering them." Taylor says to her, a slight joking to his tone.

She leaped back, "Oh, sorry."

"We'll talk about all this later right now we better get back, the sun will be rising soon and we're still vampires so..." Patrick says.

"Yeah I guess we better." Hayley says, looking back at Patrick.

Joe and Andy start to walk off with Hayley and Patrick walking behind them.

I start to follow them. When Taylor grabs me on the shoulder, he whispers, "That guy you saw down in the cave, the one that helped you? Who was he?"

He knew about red-head guy. Of course. How had I expected to get away with it, with him being able to know things like that without even trying. Especially when he was probably trying to make sense of what was going on down there.

"Just don't tell the others about him okay?" I whisper back. There was nothing more I could say on him, I had no clue who he was working for, he was completely different to Brendon who it was all so clear cut whose side he was on. It didn't make sense.

Taylor nods. "I won't. We still have to keep an eye on him though, who knows whether his siding with us or Brendon or both."

I sigh, "I've been trying to work out the same thing. Thanks, Taylor."

He nods, and goes chasing after Joe.

I sigh, as I notice Pete's not walking with them. He's still standing behind me, looking back at the cave that had contained the supposed cure. He looked sad, and honestly, I didn't blame him I thought the cure was going to solve everything when it might have inadvertently made things worse.

"Come on, Pete." I say to him.

He looks up at me and mutters, "I can't believe it didn't work. We'll never get to be human again."

Never was a very strong word. Even I knew that. Some part of me couldn't help but wonder if there was still a cure out there. A girl could hope, couldn't she?

"There has to be another way, it might take time. I know we'll find it." I decide to say.

"I don't think so." Pete groans, "I can't help but feel like that was out last shot."

"We'll find something." I say, "Together."

Pete smiles back at me, "Together."

**************************

Things weren't much better when we ended up back in town. We raced in a group through the street. Pete and I were still at the back. He still hadn't seemed very happy when we'd left. We were running behind on time; the sun would be up at any moment. I could feel it. We only had a little further to go, if we hurried we'd make it.

Pete suddenly stopped, alarmed I couldn't help but stop myself.

"Pete?" I asked, turning back to him, "What's wrong you have to keep moving!"

"Maybe I should just let the sun burn me." He said, looking up towards the direction that I would be rising in at any moment,

"Nope, I'm not going to let you do that. Come on, Pete." I frown as I tug on his arm. It's like pulling on a boulder, he doesn't move.

I see the others bolting in the door right in front of us. I can see the yellowish orange light of the sun appearing on the horizon, it's going to light up the whole area in just a few moments. I want to stop him, he can't possibly think this way.

I watch the sun start to appear, if we stay like this I'm going to go down with him, but I just can't leave him here to do this himself. I watch as the sun quickly creeps through the area.

"PETE! CASSIE! Come on!?" I hear someone yell just as I feel the warm light of the sun light hit my leg. It feels so nice. I look down, it should be smouldering by now. There's a hint of sunlight just touching Pete's skin. No reaction there either.

"How the heck-" I say.

"I'm sorry Cassie, your right we do need to keep going or the sun wi...." He trails off.

He pauses, as he follows my gaze. I can still hear the others shouting but it means nothing to me right now.

"Oh."

Bewildered we stand there longer. The sun rises and we're standing together in full sunlight. I can't believe it. I look up, the sun is right in front of me, and nothing's happening at all. I hadn't tried to go in the sun before, because I'd always been told we'd burn to a crisp if we did. Yet, here we were full sunlight and no smouldering.

I look to see that the others are all waiting at the doorway, just out of the sun's reach. Their all staring at us with the same confused awe.

I see Hayley hesitantly raising her hand forward into the light.

"What on earth?" I hear her say, as nothing happens. "Last time I tried to put my hand in the sunlight it burned."

"If it's all three of you I bet you it was that cure." I hear Joe frown.

"Which mean's it'll probably wear off sooner or later." Hayley sighs, pulling her hand back inside the door in disgust.

Alex smiled, as he stood behind them, he was leaning in the doorway. I hadn't noticed him standing there before. "You know it actually has nothing to do with the cure."

Nothing to do with the cure? Wait, did that mean this was permanent? Surely Alex was joking around with us. It couldn't be possible.

"But how would you know?" Joe asked him.

"Because, Jenna, William and I were the original vampires." He said, a sad smile on his face.

"Wait what the heck?" I hear someone say.

It almost seems like an old faded photograph, but I remember the portraits hanging on William's wall when I was in the Dandies lair. The more I think about it those portraits did resemble Alex and Jenna. Despite the girl in one of the portraits having whitish blonde hair, she looked like Jenna even though she had green hair now. The one I'd seen with brown hair had looked like Alex. What did they have to do with all this? If they had all been original vampires than how did this all work and what did it have to with our sudden ability to walk in sunlight? The idea added up though.

"I believe you." I say.

I see Taylor raise his own hand into the light, once again nothing was happening. I knew for a fact that he hadn't taken the cure, only Hayley, Pete and myself had. It was starting to look more and more like the cure had nothing to do with this.

Taylor nods, staring at his hand in full sunlight, "I believe you Alex."

Everyone else doesn't look so sure, but they nod anyway.

Alex smiles, "It's a bit of a story, why don't you all come inside, sit down and I'll tell you all about it."


	8. Immortals

I still hadn't gotten over everything that had happened today. The sun was like an old friend that I hadn't seen for a while. It was a miracle. How exactly was it that we'd been bathed in full sunlight, and hadn't burned. Alex sounded like he knew but he hadn't exactly elaborated on the reasons for it. It seemed that I wasn't the only one still excited by our newest revelation, it seemed. The room was filled with chatter, as we waited for him to return.

 When we'd reached inside he'd directed us into here claiming that he was off to find Jenna to tell us more about this whole original vampire idea. Alex had said that she had something to do with this as well. He had said she was an original vampire too I suppose. 

"Just think of the possibilities!" 

"We can practically go out whenever we feel like it." 

"Things are going to be so much easier from now on."

Tuning them out, I looked around the room. We were in the library room of Alex's place. The walls were lined with books, both old and new. Fiction and Non-Fiction Some skinny, others looked so big that it looked as though to take them off the shelf would almost squash you even with extra-strength. I hadn't been the best student in school, but I'd always loved getting lost in books. If we weren't here for this I might have loved to spend hours poring over these. Maybe one day when all this was over I'd be able to come back here and do just that. 

Eventually, Alex appeared at the doorway, Jenna following closely behind him and the conversation fell to a dead quiet. 

"Alright, everyone." Alex said looking amongst us all. He took a seat at the front of the room, near Pete and where he had just been standing. Jenna took the spot beside Hayley and myself. 

The room remained in silence for a few moments. and when Alex seemed satisfied he begun.

"So, our story begins a few years ago. It was when I came over from London to live in America for a few years. I ended up rooming with two people, William and Jenna. William was a first-year historical student...." He spoke leaning back into the arm-chair. 

"And I was taking a gap year in America from Australia." Jenna added.

It hadn't occurred to me until that moment, that both Alex and Jenna did have slightly different accents to our own. If they came from England and Australia it did make sense.  

"Exactly. Everything was fine to start off with. The three of us got on well together. I loved America, exploring, everything this place had to offer. William showed us around and we saw so many places." Alex continues. "We were such tourists weren't we Jenna?" 

Jenna nods, "We sure were. It was amazing, William was like a walking encyclopedia he taught us a lot about America. We kind of shared all the differences between being Australian and from the UK as well. Hey, remember that time we went to that shop, and I found some Vegemite and I made you both to try it?"    

Alex pulled a face, "Don't ever make me eat that awful stuff again. It was just an awful Aussie rip-off of Marmite..." 

Jenna grins. I didn't know too much about this thing called Vegemite, from all I knew it was a type of spread from Australia and it was supposed to be gross. I hadn't tried it of course. The number of clips I'd seen about it on television were enough to turn me off eating it. It looked kind of disgusting anyway, it was kind of an odd slicked blackish brown colour. Why did Australian's eat that stuff? I was about to ask more, but Alex had already moved on with the story. 

"Life was good, but someone had it out for us it soon seemed. We started receiving strange letters in the mail warning us that if things didn't improve, we would be punished. We had no idea what we'd even done wrong. William would always tear them up and throw them in the garbage. So, I guess we just started taking them as a scare tactic. That was until one day a parcel arrived for William. We were all home the day he opened it. The room lit up with a strange light. I think the box was cursed. Someone had done this to us as a punishment.  I don't know how they did it, but it's the only explanation. I think the letters and the parcel were linked, maybe even William knew what was going on all along."

I blinked, this whole vampire thing was a spell or curse? I guess I hadn't given too much thought to how it might have first started. I kind of expected some crazy experiment gone wrong before some parcel. The others look surprised as well, but no one interrupts him yet. 

"For the first few years we were friends, we’d tried to go in sunlight ourselves and at first it had burned us, so we came to a nocturnal schedule. At some point along the way slowly William became power hungry and obsessed. So, he left us and went to Chicago, where he created the Dandies a few years back. We later developed the ability to walk in the sunlight, obviously he must've too but he might not have known about it."

"We know all about him coming to Chicago part.” Pete sighs. 

"I'm sure you do," Alex nods, a grim look on his face.

"We still talked to him though. Sometime after he left us for Chicago, that's when he learned about hunter bloods. He was terrified of them so he wanted to find the Hunter-bloods and make them like us, so that we didn't have to live in fear of them any longer. He thought if they were the same they wouldn't try to hurt us. We tried to convince him to stop but it was too late." Jenna sighs, "It was stupid and pointless."

"He didn't understand, that we'd be able to turn on him?" Pete asked.

"No, he didn't." Alex shook his head. "None of us knew. He just thought he'd turn you hunter bloods and have you under his control."

"Well he had to start understanding after us?" Hayley nudged Taylor who was sitting beside her. 

"Yes, I think that slowed him down for a while, he built the Dandies further after that. After, Brendon went along with him willingly but then Pete turned on him. He wasn't too sure." Alex sighed. 

"You really did keep in contact with him, didn't you?" Andy asks.

Alex and Jenna nod, they look a little sad about it.  

"Well we had to keep an eye on him after all." Jenna sighs, "There wasn't much the two of us could ever do. He always seemed stronger than us. We built up our own lives here." She gestured to the walls around us, as if that alone proved her point.

"Yeah, that for us was where our other friends came in." Alex sighs. "I feel kind of bad about that still." 

I thought of those other guys that had been with Alex at the start. Was that who he was referring to?

"You saved them Alex." Jenna nods. 

Whatever it was Alex chooses not to elaborate past that. He shakes his head, and looks around at the group of us. 

"Anyway, enough about me. That's where you all of you come in, because you played a part in the death of William, some of his original powers were transferred onto you all. One clearly being the ability to walk in sunlight."

"Why didn't you say earlier?" I ask. You know it probably would've been a great idea if he'd known about it, then we might have been able to go out in the daylight to find the cure and perhaps Brendon and his schemes might not have worked out so well for him. 

Alex shrugs, "It didn't seem important at the time."

"The fact that we could walk in the sunlight didn't seem important to you?" Pete looked at him.

"Well I couldn't be sure, okay? As I said, I don't actually know if William learnt that he could go in sunlight." Alex says. "I didn't want to send you guys bounding into the sunlight only to get burned."

Alright, so he did have a point there at least. I had to give him that one. 

"It could also be the reason why the cure didn't work properly on any of you, it only dulled your powers. I think you must be the equivalent of original vampires now. Jenna and I had the same problem when we went looking for it."  Alex continues. 

"So, you both went looking for it yourselves and knew it wasn't going to work?" Patrick asks. 

"No, I just hoped it would. You all seemed so excited about finding it." Alex shrugs, "Sorry. If I'd known what a mess it would turn into I would've said earlier."

I sighed, we really were back to square one now then. Everyone in the room looked flat and dejected as they probably came to the same realization that I did.  

"So, what do we do now?" Pete eventually asks. 

Everyone sighs, and leans back into their seats even more. That was a problem. This was like starting all over again. The cure had been our big shot, that had turned out to be a dud. 

"Well if you’re saying that all this was created by a curse, do you think there might be a way to reverse it, without the cure." Patrick says suddenly.

Alex nods, "Interesting suggestion I never thought of that."

"It's worth a shot." Hayley nods, "Let's split up and see what we can all gather." 

Split up? I panicked for a moment. With Brendon, around shouldn't we be keeping together. Then I thought about it, if we were going to search for another cure, then splitting up may just be the quickest way to find it. We'd be able to cover much more area that way. 

"So, who's going to do what, I suppose we'll need at least someone out on the road." Andy shrugs. 

Taylor smiles at Andy, "We can look after that." 

Andy nods, "Sure." 

"Well we have some books at home?" Joe says, "I could go back and look through them."

Hayley nods, "I'll help you with that. I know those books in the warehouse well." 

I wonder how she did. That was an odd thing for her to say, I know she'd stayed with us for a few days but I didn't think that would have been enough for her to know the books in the warehouse well. I don't even think I'd seen her in our books. It wasn't worth asking though. 

What was I going to do though? I noticed the room had fallen to silence, and the others who had already chosen were looking at Pete, Patrick and I as if we had to decide what we were going to be doing.  

"Guys I think I'm going to stay behind and read the ones Alex and Jenna have here." I say, looking around the walls of books. The bookworm in me, so wanted to get stuck into these.  If I had a purpose surely, I could sneak in a few other books I wanted to read as well. 

"Then I will too." Pete nods.

"I guess I'll stay here and help as well." Patrick nods. 

"That's everyone sorted then, Taylor and Andy will go travelling, Joe and Hayley will head back to the warehouse in Chicago and Cassie, Patrick and I will stay here.... well if that's fine with you Alex." Pete says. 

Alex nods, "If it's going to help us all, then I'm fine with it."

"Of course." Jenna agrees, "You guys are welcome to stay as long as you need."

"Great, with so many of us looking we might find it this time." Hayley nods.

I couldn't help but wonder whether she'd done this before sometime. Was that what their big trip that had led to this mess had been about? Finding a cure to all of this? It seemed likely. She was right though with so many of us looking we were sure to find something, what did we have to lose?

"We will find it." Jenna nods. "We've got to."

As the preparations for the fact-finding mission commenced, I really hoped that Jenna was right. We had to be able to find something didn't we?


	9. Married To The Music

"This is useless...I don't even know if there is a curse or a cure anymore." Pete grumbles, falling back onto the lounge beside me with a thump. We were in the library of Alex's place, doing research on what possibilities for the cure. Patrick meanwhile was sitting in the corner of the lounge to the left of me. I noticed that he was scribbling something down madly. I honestly hoped that meant that he'd found something worth writing down. 

Everyone else had left Alex's a few days ago, leaving just Pete, Patrick and myself to scour through the books that they had here. Let's just say things weren't going to well. We'd found nothing that we hadn't learnt about already. I hoped that the other groups were going better than us. We hadn't heard from any of them since they'd left.  

Right before everyone left, those of us who had taken the cure's powers and abilities had started to come back. Much to my delight the whole being able to go in the sunlight thing was still possible and making everything much easier. It had turned out that Alex was right after all. Honestly, if it wasn't for the blood thing, being a vampire was almost perfectly fine now. Amazing how the thought of being able to go out in sunlight made things seem a lot brighter. I still wanted out though. How amazing would it be to be human again? I couldn't get too excited though, the way we were going it could take years to find it. It would be worth it though. 

"Patrick that's not even the book you’re supposed to be reading." Pete yells, pulling me from my thoughts. 

"I'm thinking!" He yells back, clearly frustrated. 

Pete snatches up the piece of paper, from him and scans over it, he crumples it up and throws it at Patricks head, "Come on, this is not the time for song lyrics and musical notes."

"Oi!" He says, "I need those." 

Not this again. This was the second time Pete had yelled at us already today for something stupid. Earlier today it'd been because neither Patrick or myself had arrived here early enough for his liking, even though we turned up half an hour earlier than he'd said to. That hadn't been the only one though, similar incidents over the past few days. This whole finding the cure thing had put him back on edge. At first, I thought he'd started to relax a little, but as it turned out I was very wrong. It was becoming quite difficult to keep his mood in check.  

"Pete take a chill pill," I yell. 

Pete groans at me, but doesn't retaliate any further on the matter, instead he says, "I'm going out for a moment, I'll be back. You two better have something good by then, alright?"

I sigh, and give a flippant shrug. Causing Pete's scowl to deepen. Patrick meanwhile simply nods.

Pete walks towards the door. I couldn't help but feel a tiny hint of relief, his moods were a little frustrating today. I could understand them though.  I wanted to find out more about this too but it didn't make it any less annoying. As my attention turns back to Patrick, I notice Patrick quickly un-crumples the paper and flattens it out in front of him. I hear a noise that sounds like a door shutting and I quickly glance up to find, that Pete's already left the room.  

I look over I can barely read what's written, but Pete had said that they were lyrics, hadn't he? I couldn't help but be curious, what did they say?

"Hey, can I read those lyrics?" I say to him.

Patrick looks quite startled, but starts to nod slowly.

"I guess so..." He says, "You’re not going to screw it up like Pete did, are you?" 

Well that wasn’t my plan if that was all he was worried about me reading them for. I quickly shake my head. 

"Of course not." I smile at him, "I just want to see."

He sighs, and for a moment I don't think he's going to give it to me. He looks at the paper, then back at me. I start to think that perhaps I'm being a little nosy, I mean if he wants to keep them to himself then that's fine.  

"Okay," He finally says, as he hands it over. 

I take the paper in my hands, and carefully smooth it out on my pant leg. My eyes skim carefully over it. 

 **' _Long live the car crash hearts..._ '**  The paper reads, and below it is a full bar of musical notes. Did he do this all in his head? I guess they had all been in a band before all this happened, so it made sense that he had talent musically. Why else would they have been a band?   

"These were the words you sang that night." I say. Remembering back to the night we'd defeated Beckett. Those single lyrics might have been the only reason we made it out of there that night. It was weird how those words had somehow held so much power. 

He nods, "Yeah, it's weird, I can't get them out of my head." 

"I wonder if they have a special meaning."  I say aloud as I begin to consider it. What if they did have some special meaning other than what had happened that night?

Patrick shrugs, "I don't know, maybe?" 

"Come on honestly you two, I leave the room for five seconds and you're already back to this?" A voice yells. Before I realize what's going on I find that the lyrics are ripped from my grip. I look up at Pete in protest. Who is back and has them in his hands. He folds it up, and puts it in the pocket of his black skinny jeans. I groan, doesn't he realize this might be able to help us? Who knows it might even have something to do with this. Patrick's the one with the magic voice after all. If he's got lyrics stuck in his head, it's probably a good sign. I don't think I'll get that through to Pete though, he wants us looking through these books like crazy. With no distractions, whatsoever.  

"You two can have them back at the end, okay?" He says. 

"Yes, teacher." I smile sweetly. 

Pete looks like he's about to yell at me, but he shakes his head and picks back up the book he had and returns to his spot on the lounge. 

Patrick sighs, and he too returns to his book. Left with no choice I return to my own. I sigh, this is all starting to get a little boring, we've been looking for three whole days and discovered absolutely nothing that we didn't already know. I knew there was a point to it but still, I could feel myself starting to be unfocused with every letter I read. 

I notice Pete is looking at me with an unimpressed look, I'm pretty sure he can tell I'm not reading. Quickly I make it seem like I'm reading it. I had to focus- 

"Guys! I found it." Jenna yells. I look up as she steps into the library dressed in jeans and a plain white t-shirt. In her hands is a rectangular box about the size of my arms width. 

She had said something to us earlier about finding the box that the curse had come from. I guess this was it. On the top, it still had the address and William's name on it. She put it down on the coffee table, causing Pete to look up from his book. She pulled a flat black stone rock from out of it, "Alright this was the only thing that was in the box I can't read it though as it's written in another language."

As she flipped it over I realized on the other side of the stone there was white writing in a strange language. The letters were all cursive and looked as though they were Asian characters gone wrong. They looked to be in a pattern though. To me it looked familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. I looked over to Pete and Patrick, they looked confused as. I blinked, as the shapes formed into words. It seemed the more I stared at the rock. The more I could read it.

"Respondetur tibi maledictionem in occidente maleficum" I read aloud, as my brain runs over it, linking it back to knowledge I didn't even know I had. The words had come out so naturally, like it was a language I already knew. I didn't get stuck or stumble on any of the sounds in the words.

The guys and Jenna look at me in surprise. Pete asks, "Wait, you can read it?"

Hang on, I'm the only one who can tell what it says? I'd never taken a language lesson in my life other than English. An uneasy feeling looms over me as I scan over the words. I can understand them perfectly now almost as if they were written in English to start off with. 

"Yeah it seems I can." I shrug. "I think it says, ' _the witch in the west has the answer to your curse'"_

Just as the words leave my mouth I see Alex appear at the door dressed in his usual black leather jacket and jeans. He looks around at the four of us, clearly noticing there was something holding our attention, "So what did we find today?"

"Alex, there's that slightly crazy witch lady down to the west of us isn't there?" Jenna gasps, turning up to him. She's still clearly processing what I said.

Alright so there was some witch? Did that mean that witches were real too? That was just insane, but Jenna seemed to believe there was. Perhaps that was the key to working out all of this, or at least who had done this to them.   

"Yeah, I think so? Wait what did you find that made you think she could help us?" Alex frowned at her.

Before Jenna could reply, I quickly jumped in and repeated what I'd read on the stone to him. 

"Is that seriously what all those squiggles mean?" Alex asks, his eyes gazing over the stone. "I've been looking at that for years and never once read that." 

This was getting beyond weird, how had I been able to read it so easily when no one else could? I bit my lip, feeling slightly nervous. 

"Well I guess we have to tell the others. Maybe we can get someone to go have a look down there" Patrick says, "I'll ring Andy right now, they might be over that way anyway."

Pete nods, he doesn't seem to have any argument against that. I guess he can probably see the worth in us at least taking this lead and running with it.

Patrick quickly pulls his phone from his pocket, a silver and blue flip screen mobile phone. He punches in a few numbers before bringing the phone up to his ear. He taps his fingers on the lounge, as he waits for someone to pick up. 

"Hey, Andy!" I hear Patrick say. 

I listen as he starts to explain to Andy what's going on, it's not the most amazing explanation but it is brief and does get the point across. 

"You want to talk to the girls? Okay." He says.

A sudden anxiety washes over me. Andy wants to talk to us? Well I guess Jenna and I were the ones who had both started this. I'd explained what I'd read twice already, but explaining it a third time made me nervous. Even if it was only Andy. 

Patrick quickly clicks the phone over to loudspeaker and puts it onto the table. 

"Cassie? Jenna?" I hear Andy say, his voice coming out slightly crackly over the phone line. "Would you be able to explain to me where this place is and what you know?"

I glance at Jenna who nods. The two of us then begin to give a combined explanation of what we both knew. For me, what I'd read on the stone and Jenna what she knew about where the 'witch' lived.  

"No, we're down further south." Andy replies, when we finished explaining, "Maybe you guys can go see her, she'd be just west of you guys? You could send Joe and Hayley I guess." Andy replies.

Patrick shakes his head. "They went over East towards New York. Hayley and Joe found a lead there as well."

I wonder when he'd been talking to them. I didn't question it though. It seemed Andy hadn't been talking to them either if he hadn't known where they were either. 

"Damn, maybe you guys could just go yourselves then?" Andy says. 

Us go? I suppose so, but weren't we the ones who were searching here? Perhaps we could go, this was quite a good lead after all. If it proved to be useful, even just a tiny bit it would be worth it. We had all of eternity after all. 

"I guess we could..." Patrick sighs. 

"Anyway, I've got to go. I'll assume you guys have this." Andy speaks, "Good luck, let us know if you find anything else."

With that the line goes dead, and the group of us sit in silence for a moment. If we were going to do this, we were going to have to go. 

"I suppose we're going on a road trip after all." Patrick sighs, as he clicks off the phone.  

"It's all well and good that we've found something but how are we getting there? Joe and Hayley took our car, and it'll take days with public transport, even if we tried to run there it would take a while." Pete frowns

"You could always borrow my car," Alex says from over our shoulder. 

"Are you serious?" I turn and blink at him. In the corner of my eyes I see Pete and Patrick, seem to be the one's sharing my surprise. 

"Sure, I trust the three of you." Alex nods, before pulling a set of car keys from his pocket and offering them to Pete. Who hesitantly takes them. 

"This is all really good but why?" Pete says to him, as he examines the set of keys. 

"As I said before, what your doing could help us all." Alex says.

Jenna nods. "We want to be free of this."

Pete frowns, "But then again these books aren't going to read themselves." 

Alex and Jenna glance at each other, Alex speaks, "We can read them. We've been watching the three of you the last few days, I think we can handle reading a few more books for you while you’re away."

"That would be great! Thanks." Patrick nods. 

We're all silent again, I don't know how to thank Alex it's nice of him to help us. We've only been here a few days, but it's amazing the amount of trust he has in us. I wonder if it has something to do with Hayley too, he'd known her a lot longer than either of them was letting on it seemed.  

"Anyway, do you want to come and see the car?" Alex asks, breaking the silence that had fallen between the five of us.

We nod, and Alex prompts the group of us to follow him out of the library. What was I thinking, that the car would be in here?  I walk alongside Alex as we head down a corridor that I hadn't been into before, and to a locked door with no markings suggesting that there was anything inside. Alex pulls out a key, and places it into the lock. 

The group of us step into a dark room, even with enhanced sight it's difficult to see. Then the lights flicker on and I see it.  

I blinked at the car, it looked amazing, he was going to let us borrow this? I wouldn't exactly call myself a car nerd, but I was impressed. It was a pale ocean blue colour, it kind of reminded me of our car back at the warehouse except it being a different colour. It was gorgeous. I honestly couldn't wait to be flying down the highway in this thing. We had a fair way to drive, at least an overnight trip maybe even two depending on the traffic. Hopefully Pete would let me drive it at some point, we did have a fair way to go after all and he couldn't drive it the whole time, he'd have to let Patrick and I drive at some point.  

Pete grins, his mood seems to have improved a lot in the last few minutes now that we might have a purpose, "Well I guess we better get packing then." 

 


	10. Under The Moonlight

We left town a few days later, just before the sun was coming up. I couldn't help but feel a little excited despite how nervous I felt. We'd switched over to a human schedule these past few days, as we'd be travelling mostly by daylight in the hope that we'd be able to lose Brendon in the process. We had no idea where he was right now, after what had happened with the cure but we didn't want him following us. When everyone else had left they'd had a similar plan, get out while the sun was shining so that the Dandies couldn't follow us. This was basically because far as we knew, him and the rest of the Dandies couldn't go out in sunlight like we could so hopefully we'd be safe. Well unless they'd been going around killing 'original vampires' which seemed unlikely considering I think Jenna, Alex and in a sense the rest of us were the only ones with that kind of power.   

Despite being able to travel in daylight, we'd found it still became uncomfortable after long periods of time. I guess things weren't quite as good as we hoped. By the time Pete pulled the car into a service station to get some petrol, just as the sun was beginning to set. I was starting to feel a little unwell, one look at the other two guys gave me the same impression on them. Sure, we could go out in sunlight, but it did still come with a cost. Food had little use to us these days, but I was really craving some gummy bears right now. I knew by now that we could still eat some normal food sometimes. So as Pete started to put the petrol in the car. Patrick and I headed into the gas station to grab a few things, and pay for the petrol. 

We walked together through the automatic door and into the main section of the store. My eyes caught on the bright packets of the gummy bears, in the back end of the row in front of me and I quickly went for them. I saw Patrick move over to the Newspapers that were on a stand near the door, his eyes scanning over the headlines. When I had what I wanted, I started walking back towards Patrick when I saw a shape move blindingly fast across the station's window. I blink, as I press my face closer to the glass. When I looked outside, all I could see was Pete re-attaching the pump back to the bower. Nah, it was probably just a shadow from Pete or something. We'd been out during sunlight, there was no way that Brendon could've followed us out here and so quickly. What about red-haired guy? I thought to myself but quickly shooed the thought away. He wouldn't have followed us either. Besides, I couldn't go around expecting that every moving shadow I saw was going to be a vampire.   

"Did you see that?" I ask Patrick when I reach him. He's casually flicking through the newspapers on the stand. 

He looks up, "Huh? No. I wasn't watching."

Damn. I decided to just take it as my imagination then. 

"Got everything?" He asked me, his eyes on the gummy bears. He looked a little confused that I'd bought them. It wasn't too often we bought actual food.  

"Yup." I nod, as I start to walk up to the counter, assuming that everything is sorted. Pete's obviously finished putting the petrol in, so once we pay I guess we're good to go. 

I walk up to a high desk, covered in assorted chocolate bars and sweets. A bored teenage girl with bleach blonde hair sits at the counter, she pulls out one ear of her headphones. Wordlessly she scans the gummy bears, and looks at me expectantly for the money. I shake my head, and explain that I need to pay for the petrol as well. She punches in the figures. I carefully shuffle over the coins, careful not to let our fingers meet. 

She looks at me with a look curiosity. I realise that I'm probably being too strange and raising a bit of attention. I try to keep my expression neutral, so that she can't see my fangs. It was weird being out in the 'normal' world after being in the shadows for so long. Basically I'd just been hanging around people that either were or knew about Vampires so it wasn't really a thing I had to think about.

With our purchases made Patrick and I dashed back to the car, where Pete was already waiting. I decide against telling him what I saw, I was probably just imagining it. The car starts, and we're back on our way again.  As we drive out the driveway, I see something move way too quickly in the gas station. A wave of panic goes through me, but we round the corner and I can't see the inside of it anymore. I focus my eyes straight ahead focusing on the white dotted lines of the road, nothing happened back there. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.   

"So how much further are we going tonight?" Patrick asked, taking my attention away from what I might have saw.

"You getting tired?" Pete asks him. 

"Just a little." He nods.

"A bit further, and we'll find somewhere to stop. We should make it there early afternoon tomorrow if we can keep this pace." Pete says. 

After what Pete had said, tomorrow was suddenly starting to hit me as a scary concept. If we did in fact meet this witch lady, would she hold the answer to all our questions or would see be totally unhelpful and a total sham. Starting with the fact that I didn't believe in witches made the second theory seem a whole lot more likely. On the other hand, I hadn't believed in Vampires until a few months ago and well you know how that went down. 

Eventually Pete takes a turn off and we pull into a park in the middle of nowhere. I can see the lake in front of us. The moonlight shimmering off the water. Well if we were planning on making a stop I couldn't argue with this place. We'd already decided to try not to make stops at any motels or anything of the like in case someone was tracking us. Besides it would be much easier to make a quick getaway from here than some hotel filled with people.  

"Everyone fine with here?" Pete asked, as he pulled the handbrake on. 

"Yeah" Patrick nods quickly.  

"Perfect." I nod in agreement. 

The three of us hop out the car and stand out by the lake for a little while. It was gorgeous here. The lake looked almost as though it went on forever, mountains stretched the entire way around it. Reminding me of the lake in those Harry Potter movies I'd seen a few times before. 

"Alright, guys I'm going to get some rest." Patrick eventually says, as he turns towards the car. 

I hear Pete agree, and the two of them leave. So now it's just me standing out there. I stay there for a few moments more, and then decide to follow suit and possibly get some rest myself.  

When I turn around I find that Patrick's already asleep on the backseat of the car, and Pete's brought the sleeping bag and pillow out and sat them beside the car. He looks to be asleep already as well. I guess they were both more exhausted than I thought. Personally, I wasn't too tired myself, but I knew I'd be hating myself in the morning if I didn't at least try. 

I noticed a spare sleeping bag on the ground, that was clearly to be mine. I frowned, I didn't particularly want to sleep there.  I made a quick glance, there wasn't too many other options. Except the car. I'd slept on the roof of a car once back in high school. My current boyfriend at the time and I had gone on a kind of camping trip that reminded me kind of this and we'd slept on the roof of the car together.  I wonder where he was right now, I was pretty sure he'd gone on to somewhere bigger like California or New York. He'd been smart and creative, it wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, sleeping on the roof of the car hadn't been too bad of an idea though, and I was pretty sure it would be now too. 

With my plans made, I carefully pulled myself up onto the roof of the car and when I was up. I pulled my sleeping bag up after me, and laid down on it. Much better. 

Once I'm comfortable, I let myself look up at the night sky. It was beautiful up there, all those patterns and constellations. No matter how many times I looked up at the night sky I always found it incredibly beautiful. All the infinite possibilities that were out there, all the worlds and galaxies out there just waiting to be discovered. 

I hear a loud thud that distracts me from the awe of the stars. I panic, almost thinking that somethings happened when I look over to find Pete's now occupying the other half of the car's roof. I thought he was sleeping!

"Pete, honestly don't scare me like that." I say, with a jump.

Pete grins and looks up to the sky.

"The stars are nice tonight." He simply says, not pointing out the fact that I was lying up here. 

"Yeah." I say softly, I was still in a bit of a panic over being frightened like that. 

He points up to the stars, naming some of them, “There’s Aquila, then there's Orion; Vega; Lynx."  

This continues for a little while, he starts explaining some of the stories behind them and why they were called what they were. It was amazing listening to him. It wasn't too often I heard him talk about something like this. I'm surprised, who would've thought he knew all of this.  

"You know a lot about stars, don't you?" I eventually say. 

"A little, I learnt what a few of them were when I used to sit up on the warehouse roof sometimes after I first got turned. This kind of reminds me of that." Pete sighed. 

I could imagine that, Pete sitting on the warehouse roof, probably with a book on constellations and learning them to give himself something to do. That reminded me of something too I was curious about the warehouse. I'd been meaning to ask Hayley about it before she left, but there was a good chance Pete would know as well. 

"Hey, what did Hayley mean when she said she knew the warehouse books so well? I thought she'd only been there a few times." I ask him. 

Pete pauses before he shook his head, "She's probably been there more than me."

Huh? I barely saw her anywhere near the books whilst we were in there. 

"What do you mean?" I ask him. "I didn't think-"

"She's been in there alright." He nods again, remaining cryptic over the matter.

"But how?" I say. 

Pete sits up on the car, he glances at me with his eyebrows furrowed. He doesn't look mad, but he doesn't look to happy either. Part of me, wonders if I should drop the subject but I'm starting to get the feeling there's something I don't know about all of this.    

"I don't think it's really my place to tell you what I know about Hayley and Taylor's story." Pete finally says. 

"Well I remember you saying she was one of the things that got you started, so technically she's a part of your story." I say with a shrug, "So if they ever ask, well then it just slipped out."

"Alright fine, just don't tell her I told you okay. If you haven't already noticed she doesn't like to talk about it." Pete gives in. 

I had noticed that, she'd shut Jenna up quickly that other night. When she'd started to say something about it. I nod at him, to start. 

"Well, as I told you, she saved me from an attack from a vampire one night. The guys, Brendon and myself were out celebrating our album being finished, it was fun night. I met this girl there, and ended up going off with her. She was beautiful and perfect. Well until she tried to attack me, thankfully Hayley arrived. Basically, she saved my life. That was the night when I first learnt of the vampires. At the time, she was a vampire hunter, one of a group of five in our area. I was amazed that someone could do that."

Wow, I'd had no idea about that. So, she really had been a vampire hunter as well. I mean the whole hunter blood thing should've implied that. Though if I hadn't stood up to those Dandies hanging around outside the coffee shop that night would I have ended up becoming a hunter myself? Probably not. William did have his eye on me though, so who knows what would've happened in the end.

"The next time I met her was after everything happened with Brendon's house getting attacked by a group of vampires. It started to really hit home at that point that the vampires did exist so that was when the five of us decided to become hunters. It was only a few nights later that I met her again when I needed a break from the other guys, we started talking. Then decided to start meeting up all the time after that. We met quite often, always in the same spot under the large tree in the park. It's not there anymore if you're wondering. Then our album came out and we went and toured it, when I came back she didn't meet me at our usual spot. That worried me."

Pete paused for a moment, he looked up to the sky again as if lost in his own thoughts. He sighed.

"Then what happened?" I prompted, "How did you find her again?"

"She found me." He spoke, "She appeared one night at my house, she looked pale and awful. Looking back now, I think she might have just escaped from William after he turned her. She was so distant that night, and wouldn't tell me at all what was going on. All she did was give the keys of the warehouse over to me, and told me to look after it for her. To do what I wanted with it, to continue with what she couldn't. The way she talked I realized something was incredibly wrong, but I was too afraid to ask her."

Ah, that would explain why she knew where to find the books in the library, she'd lived in the warehouse hadn't she? That explained a lot of things, why the place was so well equipped. If Hayley and her group had lived there no wonder there was so many weapons, rooms everything. I wasn't sure how long the guys had been there before I'd come along but the more I thought about it, it probably wasn't long enough to have accumulated that much gear. 

"So, I'm guessing you didn't see her again, until after she came back that night to help me bust you guys out?" I ask, wondering if that was where the story was going.

"No, that wasn't the last time I saw her before she came back. It was a while before I saw her again though, but I think that must have been the point where she met Alex and Jenna. She came back to Chicago again only after I got turned. I think she might have been keeping an eye on us somehow. When she came back she tried to help me. At first, I tried to fight against her, but she did end up helping me out a lot once I let her."

"You said there was five of them though, so what happened to the other hunters she was with?" I ask, as that thought suddenly springs to mind.

He shook his head, "To be honest, I don't know what happened to three of the four guys she was with. I was never really friends with them or anything. If I saw them as a group they were kind of just there. I only know what happened to Taylor because he's been here with us. I think she might've mentioned that Zac's still around though, he managed to escape just after she did. Not sure what his status is if you know what I mean."

I nodded, well that did make sense.

"So why did she leave again then? When she came I'm sure you said that you hadn't seen her in a while." I ask.

Pete sighed, "We had an argument one night, over something stupid. The next day, she told me she was leaving town again for a while, she was worried William was on her tail again. That was the last I saw of her again until she came and saved us just before you were turned."

"She seems to have a habit of doing that." I sigh.

Pete nods with a slight smile, "Yeah, she kind of does, doesn't she?"

"Anyway, enough about Hayley alright. That's probably more than she'd like anyone to know." Pete shook his head. 

"Well pick something else to talk about then." I frown at him.

"Alright, ask me anything." He says. 

"What about how you met Brendon?" I decide to go with. 

He glances at me, a frown of his face. "Anything but that."

"Come on. I know you and Brendon had some history as well. You already told me about Hayley, why not him as well."  I protest. 

He shakes his head, "Maybe another time." 

"I'll remember that Pete." I rolled my eyes at him, I decided I'd been nosy enough for today, "How about the stars again then?"

Pete seemed a lot keener at that topic, "Okay."

Pete began to talk about the stars again, and I found myself listening intently once again. Occasionally I'd ask a question and Pete would have the answer to it. Eventually I started to feel my eyes droop and struggled to keep them open long enough. Pete's voice stops and I felt the sleeping bag pulled up.  

"Goodnight, Cassie." Pete says.  


	11. Where The Lines Overlap

"Rise and shine sleepyheads." A voice says. 

I open my eyes, and wince as the bright light of the sun hits my face. I blink a few times letting my eyes adjust to it. After a few moments, I roll over to find that Patrick is standing beside the car, his arms are crossed. How long did we sleep for? We had wanted to get an early start today, but judging by the sun and Patrick's expression we didn't do too good a job of that. I'm not the only one who didn't wake up when they were supposed to though, Pete's still lying next to me, also still asleep. Patrick's eyes flash over me, seeming to process that I'm awake. He looks back at Pete hopelessly. I wonder just how long he's been trying to wake us up for? Judging by his frustrated look, quite a while. 

"Come on Pete. Wake up." Patrick says again, frowning at him.

Pete's arms move and for a moment I think he might wake up. Instead, he simply rolls over to face me, his eyes still shut tightly. Yup, his still asleep. I look up at Patrick, who rolls his eyes. 

"PETE!" He yells, shaking him on the shoulder.    

Pete groans, the rolls back over, a few moments later he sits up. "Alright, alright. I'm waking up, geez Patrick." 

"Good, considering we were all supposed to be up two hours ago." Patrick shakes his head.

"Oh." Pete says, quickly pulling himself up and off the car. Quickly I do the same. If we were supposed to be up a while ago, the longer it takes the more we delay getting to the house by sunset. I really don't want to see the guys mad if I start holding us up any longer than we already have been. 

With everyone awake, we head off again. Soon I find us on another sprawling high-way. This one is more vacant than the one we travelled on yesterday, both in traffic and the land surrounding us is more barren and vacant, leading into high rolling hills made of dirt. I'd never been out this way before. Well, I had to admit I hadn't gone too much further past Chicago period. Except for that trip we made to Florida, Disneyworld when I was twelve.  I hadn't seen much of the world past that though, EPCOT had been my best shot at it.  

After a few hours of driving, Pete eventually turns off the highway and after a few windy roads onto a dirt track. It seems this witch liked living out the way, didn't she?  After driving along, the dirt road we come to a two-story country style house; painted in full white, with flowers growing around it both in beds around the house and up the sides of the house like climbing vines. Alright, this hadn't quite been what I was expecting, especially after we turned onto that dirt road. If this person really was a witch I was kind of thinking it might be more dark and creepy looking. Maybe like those kinds of places that you see in horror movies. Really it just looked like any ordinary place you might find in a town anywhere else. Pete pulls the car up to a stop and kills the engine. So, this must be it, besides the road ends here. So, there's unlikely to be another house out here. 

"This it?" Patrick asks skeptically, as he looks out the window. It seems I'm not the only one unsure if we have the right place. 

Pete nods. Tapping on the now scrappy piece of paper Alex had written the address onto before we left. 

I couldn't argue with that, unless the person had moved this was our best shot. 

The three of us leave the car. The sun's just starting to show signs of setting, it'll be dark soon. My knee-high boots crunch on the gravel as we walk up the pathway past rows of unusual looking flowers and herbs. Alright, maybe now a witch living here is looking more likely. They use strange herbs and things, don't they? Maybe that's just the stories. Eventually we come to the door, I stand behind Pete and Patrick as they knock on it. Best let them handle this. 

I hear nothing at first, then footsteps, then what sounds like someone swearing.  The there's a jingling sound that seems to come to an abrupt stop only a few moments later. I hear something click open. Then the door moves inwards revealing a woman with frizzy pale dirty blonde hair and tanned skin, a sign of many years spent outdoors.  She was perhaps only a few years older than we were. Her eyes widened as she looked over the three of us. She stood frozen for a few moments, as if paralysed with fear. She sucked in a deep breath. 

"Nope I'm not helping with that." She says angrily before she slams the door back in our face.

I look at Pete and Patrick. It's funny how contrasting they are right now. Patrick who simply shrugs and Pete who is frowning, but looking more determined than ever. Pete marches up to the door and knocks again firmly. I hope he's not going to try and break the door down if she doesn't come back out anytime soon.

"Come on, please." Pete yells, "At least hear us out. We're not going to hurt you." 

"No." A voice replies angrily. "I'm done with you, all of your kind. Please leave." 

We're not going to leave, are we? We should keep trying, she might be our only hope of finding a cure. 

"So, you must know something then, didn't you create all this?" Patrick yells into the door. 

"Yes." The voice answers back, after a short silence.

That answers one question at least, we should have come to the right place. If she started all this then of course she'd have to know all about it. That could also be the exact reason that she was so afraid of us.  

"Please help us." I say into the door, feeling very much like this is our final chance. I don't really think by me asking it would change very much though. 

Amazingly, at my words the door swings open. She seems to look straight past Patrick and Pete, and solely at me. I begin to feel uncomfortable under her eerie gaze. Her head tilts one way, then the other.

"You." She says in both a surprised and accusatory tone. 

"Excuse me?" I say. I can't possibly understand what would make her single me out of the three of us. My stomach starts to fill with butterflies as the woman frowns.  

"Fine, all of you can come in." She says with a smile and a cheerful tone, totally different from how she had been only a few moments before. I glance at Pete and Patrick hesitantly. They both seem to look just as confused as me. What was with her sudden change in attitude once she heard me talk? I push past it as I follow the guys into the house. This was what we'd come here for wasn't it. If she was suddenly willing to talk to us, we had to take it.

As we entered, her house immediately struck me as unusual; floral dollies decorated the room, and there was a stand filled with hundreds of china dolls. I shivered, as I looked at them, their eyes seemed to watch me as I walked past them. I'd always had a slight fear of dolls after the creepy tales that people used to tell about them at sleepovers whilst I was growing up. I'd heard enough horror stories of dolls coming to life to be terrified of them, even now that I was older.  

She leads us to a table, and quickly set down a table cloth, and gestured for us to sit. I took the seat beside Patrick; and Pete sat on the other side of me. Patrick seemed to shift nervously in his seat as his eyes were on the woman.  

"Who would've thought that I'd see the day when three vampires walked into the house." She shook her head, as if mumbling to herself.

I start to feel nervous again. What if this ends up being another trap like last time.  

"So, what changed your mind about letting us in?" Pete asked quickly. 

"All in time, Pete." She smiles.

I froze. We hadn't said our names yet had we. 

"How do you-" Pete started to say. 

The woman shook her head. Pete sat back for a moment looking completely shocked. It did seem to prove the point that she was a witch after all. 

"So, you said that you created the curse?" Patrick started, probably noticing Pete's lack of words for once. 

"Well partly, vampires have roamed the earth for much longer than anyone cares to talk about." I shivered a little at that, so even if we found a way to cure ourselves it seemed that there would still be many more vampires out there. "The particular curse you’re talking about was in fact my doing, a trick I picked up from my grandmothers’ old grimoire. I did it to get back at William, he picked on me for many years whilst we were growing up. He was an awfully charming boy, but he needed to be taught a lesson." She nodded, if that was reason enough.  

"You do realise the town of Chicago almost fell to him because of your stupid curse." I say, boldly, my eyes fixated straight on her.

The woman's eyes widened, and her mouth fell in surprise. "The curse wasn't that strong, it shouldn't have given him full vampire powers. It was only supposed to curse him to a life of solitude, it was only supposed to be the sunlight part and some of the vampire things. I made sure of it."

"Well it didn't work very well considering apparently that was the thing he could apparently do." Pete said. 

"He was able to walk in the sunlight?" She asked, fear in her eyes.

"Jenna and Alex seemed to think so, they got caught up in your curse as well." I add. 

She frowned, "Those people he lived with.... the spell was too strong."

"You do realise you've ruined countless numbers of people’s lives?" Patrick yelled at her, surprising me. it had been a while since I'd heard Patrick yell like that. I'd expect that kind of volume from Pete, but surprisingly he sat in silence, but I could tell from the trembling of his hand that he was feeling the same way. 

I nodded, thinking of all the stories that I'd heard. Remembering Pete's story about Hayley that was still so fresh in my mind. I thought of Pete, Patrick, Joe and Andy how their dream of perusing   music had been strangled away from them by this woman's decision that had clearly been made blind of all judgement. Then there was me, perhaps working in a coffee shop all my life wasn't my life dream but neither was being a vampire either. Then again without the curse I might never have met the hunters that had so easily become my friends. I knew it was selfish to think about that though, people had died. I guess even William himself, no matter how cruel and awful that he had been. He'd been human once, quite possibly not much nicer from what she'd said but still so many lives were entangled up by this one curse. 

"So, how do we cure it?" Pete asks, suddenly seeming to remember that this was our point in coming here all along.

The woman sighs and shakes her head, "Impossible."

Impossible? Those words sink into me. Now that she'd said it made me believe that there was no cure after all. We were trapped like this forever now. At one point I'd have accepted it, but now after having that beacon of hope it all seemed so frustrating. Sure, things were better now that we could walk in the sunlight but it's still not enough. It seems I'm not the only one left frustrated by this latest revelation, Pete groans and sinks into his seat. Patrick sighs, and I notice that his eyes are gazing out the window rather than in the rest of the room. 

It also meant that Hayley, Joe, Andy and Taylor weren't going to find anything out there either. Perhaps we could just call this whole search off. It was all so pointless now. 

"Surely there's something." Patrick sighs, his attention back to the table.

"Well I guess I could have a look for you I suppose, surely there's something. That is, if you're all willing to hang around a little longer." She says as she leans back onto her chair. "I'll need some tea first though; would you care for a cup? I know it's not what you need but-" 

"Of course." Patrick replies quickly, he turns to look at us, his voice lowered slightly "If that's alright with you guys..."

Well what did we have to lose, we'd travelled all this way, it couldn't hurt to let the woman look through a spell book or two to find what we needed. I nodded, and so did Pete. 

"Come and help me with the tea, dear." She says looking directly at me. Something in her gaze tells me that there's more to this than tea. Surely, she could pour four cups and bring them out by herself. Regardless I decide to follow along. Since she'd let us in the door she didn't seem to have any ill-intent towards us. 

I follow her into the kitchen. She ducks her head around to make sure that the guys haven't followed us. Suddenly she grabs my hand and closes her eyes for a few moments. Her hands are warm. I panic, what's she doing some witchy voodoo curse on me? She opens her eyes and winks at me, "I knew it. You’re the real cure"

Huh? I blink at her. My thoughts frozen in place, I wasn't quite sure if I'd heard her right. I couldn't, she was joking, right? The thing we were looking for was me? But how? That didn't make any sense, surely if I had something to do with the cure we would've found it by now surely. 

She smiled a small time, "Hush, don't tell them yet. You'll find out what I mean when the time is right."

"But I can't be-how?" I start to say when I can suddenly hear a loud crash and then a yell that sounds like it's coming from outside the room. The woman's eyes grow wide and she starts to tremble. Her mouth opens and closes, like she's having trouble trying to talk. 

"H-H-e-e" She starts to stutter, before giving a cough, "He's here."

He's here? Who's here? My stomach tightens, I'm sure I can hear someone yelling and something makes a loud crash. Was it glass? I feel rude to the woman who's clearly panicking over all this, but screw this tea. I should know that Patrick and Pete are okay. Dropping her hands, I race out into the lounge room. I glance over the room, I want to scream in frustration when I see who our guest is.  

It seems Brendon did find a way to follow us after all. 

 


	12. I Hear Them Calling

I looked around the room for any kind of clue as to what I had hear, there had been a lot of loud crashes. Sure enough, it's a total mess; the table is flipped over, the cupboard that held those creepy dolls has fallen to the ground. I grimace, I don't want to look at them any further. They creeped me out enough when they were all in one piece. 

My eyes landed on the tall man standing near the wall. I'd know him anywhere, he's standing there, in full dandy get up. I notice quickly that he has Patrick and Pete pushed against the wall. One of them held simply by one hand each. I hadn't seen them look so afraid as I did right now. I didn't blame them, Brendon was a force to be reckoned with when you knew he was coming for you. So, if he'd taken them by surprise that would've been another deal all together. I look outside, the sun is still setting. How the heck did he get in here? We should have at least had another half an hour or so before he could have even managed to stand in it. Unless he'd knew where we were going and found a way into the house and made it here before us. What if this whole witch thing had been another of his tricks to lead us on a wild goose chase for the cure? Perhaps he'd wanted us to come here all along. I also couldn't just assume, him and the witch were linked in that way. 

I shook my head. Even though I didn't believe her that I had anything to do with the cure, there had seemed something genuine in her actions. She had seemed to be trying to help us, once she worked out we weren't going to hurt her.  Though if this was a trap and he'd been following us, why hadn't he attacked us last night whilst Pete and I had been sleeping on the roof. There was a lot of possibilities and none of which I could processes right now.  

Brendon had turned to face me, managing to keep Pete and Patrick where they were as he did so, "I knew the Princess had to be around here somewhere." He grinned, his eyes on me. "A bit far from home, aren't we?" 

I hated when he called me Princess, which was basically all the time that he'd ever talked to me. It usually meant he wanted something. I took a deep breath, we'd been through these taunts so many times it was starting to get old. I couldn't underestimate the power of them though, he tended to give away his plans during them. This was the time to make plans of my own and find a way out of here, with the other guys.

"I should be asking you the same thing, what are you doing here?" I yelled, knowing if I tried to pull him from the guys, he'd find a way to stop me. I had to think about this, and wait for the right moment to get past him. 

"I can't reveal my secrets, Princess" He said as he continued. "I already missed my chance last time because I revealed the plan too early."

William had made that mistake as well, and look where he'd ended up. No wonder Brendon had worked it out, he even knew he did it.  

Brendon suddenly let out a groan and his face moved to the side at an awkward angle. Before I could realize what was going on, there was a blur of motion, and Pete appeared beside me. I blinked had he punched him? 

However, Patrick on the other hand, had been caught on the foot, Brendon dragged him backwards and in a blur pressed him back against the wall, I saw Patrick wince. I had to give it to Brendon he recovered quickly. 

"You know I should've killed you when I had the chances. You're too afraid of yourself, I'm surprised you've lasted so long. Sure you have that voice of yours but it's useless when you’re too scared to use it." Brendon spoke to him, just loud enough that we could hear it. "I guess these two won't miss it if I-"

"Don't you dare talk to him like that." Pete yelled as he raced forward and dragged Brendon backwards, throwing him to the ground.  

Ugh, what was I doing just standing here, that was totally uncalled for and I'd just stood here. I was way tougher than that. I could help Pete, but Patrick looked visibly shaken by what had just occurred. I quickly realised that Brendon thought of him as the weakest of the three of us and I think that he was starting to believe that.  He could be just the person to get us out of here though, with exactly the thing Brendon thought that he couldn't do. 

As quick as I could I joined Patrick over the other side of the room. He blinked at me, as if he was surprised by my actions. I made a quick glance over, Pete was still handling Brendon fine on his own. They were evenly matched, when neither had the element of surprise. I had time to try and make sure he was right. It was best to let them tire themselves out and join in at the last moment.   

"You okay?" I whispered. 

Patrick nods, but his voice isn't very convincing, "Yeah."

"Don't let him get to you. You can do amazing things, it just doesn't have to be fighting." I say.

Patrick sighed, I guess he could tell that I could tell he wasn't happy over it, "He's right though. What kind of vampire am I if I can't even fight. You and Pete are amazing, I can never be like that."  

"Look why don't you just sing and stop him? Prove him wrong."

"I can't." He shook his head. "I'm-"

Patrick stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widened. What was he doing that for? I turned to find that Brendon had Pete pressed to the ground with his foot. Brendon grinned, "Even your friends don't want to help you." 

Just then the second window behind us shattered. I winced as some of the flakes hit my skin, thankfully they healed quickly. I looked back up to find that an entire group of Dandies were coming flooding in. Each of them was dressed in their usual attire. My stomach sunk, we were having enough trouble dealing with Brendon let alone an entire group of them. We were entirely outnumbered. There was only three of us, there was no way we could take on twenty odd Dandies on our own. We had to try, I'd rather go down fighting than not even bother. 

I made a quick glance at Patrick, I hoped that he would be alright. I nodded to him, and he gave a nod back. 

My focus turned back to the Dandies that were heading towards us. Summoning my strength, I lost myself in a sea of them. I punched and kicked at them, trying my best to defend myself against as many of them as possible. I was doing well despite the circumstances. Then I heard a scream, and my concentration broke. 

Before I knew what was happening, I was dragged under, a whole group of them had me now, I was forced backwards and fell onto the floor. Six against one was never going to work. I tried to push them back off but I was beginning to feel weak. I continued to try and put up a fight but there seemed to be no way out of this. I closed my eyes, this was all over. I couldn't do this any longer.  

For a moment, there was simply nothing. I thought for a second that this must be the end. All was quiet, there was no sounds, no pulling and tugging. Had they stopped? I opened my eyes to find the faces of four Dandies, each of them had their arms around mine as if they'd been trying to pull me down. They weren't moving, seemingly frozen in time around me. Hesitantly, I shook the arms off with almost no trouble. I quickly slid out, slightly creeped out by the Dandies faces, there was so many frozen emotions on them, passion, fury, hate, pride. I turn away pulling myself up in the free space. 

I looked around me, the rest of the room was in a similar way, frozen Dandies. I see an arm, that I assume from the clothing that it's Pete moving. Then I see Patrick appear from behind another group of Dandies. Both with just as surprised looks on their faces. What on earth happened here, what is this?  How were the three of us fine, but the Dandies were like they were. 

"Go now." A voice says, I turn to find that the witch is standing there, her arms outstretched. Her eyes pulsating with an orange embered glow. "I can't hold them much longer."

Her, she'd done this. She’d somehow frozen the Dandies so that we could escape. Phew, this hadn't been Brendon and the Dandies cure trap 2.0. She can't have been working with him, for her to do this. I stare for a moment dumbfounded, what kind of power would it take to control something like that. 

I feel someone grab my arm, Pete I think. I ignore him, we can't possibly leave her here. The moment those Dandies are let free they'll attack her for sure. 

"What about you?" I ask. 

"Just go." She says, a strain to her voice. "I'll handle them myself."

Pete tugs on my arm again. "Cassie. We have to go, we don't have much time." 

He's right, I notice that some of the Dandies are twitching like they’re about to spring back into life again. We do have to get out of here. Patrick and Pete are both already moving towards the door. I make a few steps forward, but I feel kind of rude about it, she practically just saved us. I have time for one thing. 

"Thanks." I call out to her, as I race to catch up with Pete and Patrick. 

"Take care. You know where to find me." She calls back. 

Something in those words told me, we would meet again someday. Just not when an angry group of Dandies was chasing after us. I just hoped that she was right about being able to handle them herself. She had looked as though she was starting to weaken. I pushed that thought out of my mind as my feet found the grass in the front garden. I could see Alex's blue car sitting on the road. No Dandies seemed to be anywhere near it thankfully. 

The car. Someone's going to need to drive it. I'm sure Pete is a great driver, but he looks exhausted from fighting Brendon. I don't think it's a good idea to let him continue. I can see the car keys hanging slightly from his pocket. I could ask him, but he'd deny that he was tired. So, I quickly make a grab for them, once I feel that their safely in hand. I quickly race around him to take the driver’s seat, unlocking the car as I do so. Before he's even realized what, I've done, I quickly slam the door and wind the window down. I look out to find Pete standing there with his arms crossed. 

"Cassie, you’re not driving." Pete frowns, standing at the window, he makes a grab for the steering wheel. As if that's going to stop me from driving. 

"Yes, I am. Now stop winging and get in the back before I leave you behind." I yell. I wouldn't ever leave him behind, but he doesn't have to know that.  

Our eyes lock for a moment. He makes one look back towards the house, and goes to sit in the back seat. Patrick takes the passenger seat beside me.  Everyone barely puts their seat belts on when I turn the key into the ignition, I look in the rear-view mirror, Dandies are starting to spill out from the house. I put the car into drive and press my foot firmly onto the accelerator pedal. The car roars to life, and we lurch forward, shooting rocks and dust everywhere. Hopefully that would buy us some more time. 

Beside me, Patrick grabs onto the handle bar on the roof of the car, as we screech around the windy dirt road. I lose sense of time as I weave along the road, with the sole focus of getting us as far away from that house as possible. We eventually come back onto streets, and I turn us onto the main highway. I look in my rear-view mirror, and check both side ones. I relax, when I notice that no dandies are following us. 

I finally have a moment to collect my thoughts. Oh my god, how had that turned into one of the scariest encounters I'd had with the Dandies. Yes, even more than the incident with the cure in the cave. This time it was because there was now the very real possibility that they could all somehow travel in sunlight, or at the very least Brendon. Next that I wasn't sure how long the witch would be able to hold them off for. Would she be okay? Sure, I barely knew the woman but the last I'd seen of her she'd told us to get out of her and seemingly made Brendon fall to the ground with pain. I'd hate to think if she'd used it on one of us.   

"Cassie, where the hell did you learn to drive like that?" Pete says. 

 

 


	13. Hold On Tight

I was the cure, how on earth could I be the cure? I was just Cassie. Alright so maybe I was a hunter blood and a vampire. Yet still those two things didn't count. Did I really have to add cure to my list of titles? It had been two days since we'd returned from the witches’ house.  We hadn't talked about it much. I don't think any of us wanted to talk about it, in the risk of thinking of the woman we'd left behind back there. Who knew what had happened to her, we weren't sure if Brendon was even still alive. We were probably supposed to be thinking about the cure. But I couldn't talk to them with what I'd found out about that. It didn't make sense to me, so why should it to anyone else. A thought lingered in my mind, theoretically if I was the cure what did that mean for me.  Was there a way I could just simply wave my magic wand and everyone would be human again. An old episode of Buffy came to mind where the key had been one of the main characters. Did I have to die to save everyone else? Maybe it was best if I didn't think about it anymore. I hoped if I was this cure that it didn't involve that. 

I'd kind of been avoiding everyone, there was something about everything that had happened that had shaken me up badly. No one had attempted to get anything out of me, or find out what was wrong. I just stayed in my room for the most part. I wondered when we would be going home again, I had no idea if Pete or Patrick were even still searching for anything. I'd kind of shut myself off from it. No one had argued with me about it, so I preferred to keep away from it all. 

There's a knock on my door, and I mentally groan as I go to answer it. I'm frustrated until I realise It's Pete standing there, in a black leather jacket and black skinny jeans. 

"Hey." He simply says. 

"Uh...hi." I say nervously, we hadn't really talked this past few days. 

He sighs and leans his hand against the door, "Patricks doing some more research, but I was thinking now that we can at least go in the sun now, why don't we go and enjoy it...sunrise is in five minutes."

"I don't know Pete...I-"

"You've been cooped up in here for days, come on. If you get sick of it then you can come back to your brooding room." Pete says.

"Funny how the roles have reversed huh, it's usually you doing all the brooding." I grin

Pete rolls his eyes, but he makes a small laugh. "Alright, I'll give you that one. But seriously Cassie, come outside."

"I'm kind of busy..."

"Doing what? Watching paint dry? You haven't been out your room except to eat in ages." Pete sighed, "Whatever it is, it can wait."

"I don't really want to." I say, my voice betraying me slightly, as I thought about what he was asking. Was it really such a bad thing?

"Suit yourself." He shrugs as he starts to walk away and I begin to feel incredibly guilty. I should just go with him.

"Pete, wait." I yell. "I changed my mind."

He raises his hand out to me, "Come on."

Not bothering with shoes, I follow him through the corridors until we come to what I was pretty sure was just a small cupboard door. 

"You know, Alex does have a front and back door that we could've gone out. I don't think there's going to be much sunlight in there." I comment. 

Pete glances back at me as he pushes the door open. "Front doors are overrated." 

I look past him to see what's in this cupboard. There's a large metal ladder, that leads up into the roof, that's all that's there. I raise an eyebrow, a secret passage? Where did it lead though? Perhaps I should've worn shoes after all. 

Pete approaches the ladder and begins to climb. He pauses at one point almost the entire way up and seems to pull a latch on the roof. A door opens into the sky. I can see the end of the night fast approaching. 

"You coming?" He asks. 

I nod, following him up the ladder. When I come to the end, Pete helps me up the rest of the way. I find that we're now standing on the rooftop, with a view over the whole city. The city lights are still on, soaking up the last few moments of life. I gaze over the town of houses and shops, taking notice of those that were open those that are not. I could see early morning commuters springing their cars into life on the early morning. After being so secluded in the warehouse it was amazing to be able to stand here and see all of this. 

I sat down, and Pete did the same beside me. I look into the distance and noticed the first few flecks of life coming from the horizon as the sun came to meet us. Slowly the yellow and orange expanded, illuminating the entire sky with its light. 

Pete and I sat there for a while just watching as the sun made its ascent into the sky. There were no words to describe it. It felt calming to just sit here on the roof of Alex's place and forget the world below. Right now, it was just Pete and I and the rising sun I had to concern myself with. 

The light creeps its way across the rooftop and I twitch as the warm light hits my bare toes. It's warmth seeps through me like a summer day. 

"This is nice." I smile at him, breaking the spell. Feeling slightly reminded of the night we'd spent under the stars on the way to visit the witch. Just the sky was a little bit opposite. I suppress the thought about the witch immediately as it tries to rear its head in my conscience. 

Pete nods, it's so weird being in the daylight again, I've been staying inside these past few days that I'd almost forgotten what it was like. 

"So, when are we going back home?" I asked. 

Pete was silent for a moment, before he sighed, "Nah, we're not going back to Chicago for a little while longer, both the other groups don't think they'll be back for at least another week." 

So, I was still here for another week. I couldn't possibly explain to Pete how I'd reached a point where I was ready to leave. Where I wanted to leave, that was another reason I'd stayed in my room. I couldn't bear to face the others, feeling like I'd killed someone without even trying.

I gave a small sigh. 

Pete glanced at me, "Something the matter?" He asked his voice full of concern. 

No way could I admit to still being worried about that woman. Everyone else had probably long forgotten about her.

Instead I decided to try to change the subject to something else, "I was just thinking, we’ve lived in that warehouse for a few months yet we barely know anything about each other." 

I felt stupid as soon as I said it. A small smile appears on his face. My brain calms down at that. 

"I guess you’re right." Pete nods, "Hmmm let's see, I used to be a pretty good soccer player?" 

I blinked, somehow, I couldn't picture that, "You used to play soccer?" 

"Yeah, chose music instead...well that was until all this happened. You?"

"Ice-skater." I was just ready to hear him laugh. 

"You any good?" 

"A little. I gave it up when I was fourteen though. Too competitive." That was the truth, I had been pretty good, I'd won at a few contests growing up. Yet as I'd grown older the girls had gotten nastier and more serious. They played pranks on me, wrecking my ice-skates so that I'd slip and fall over as soon as I tried to skate on them. I'd tried reporting it, but no one had seemed to listen so I'd simply quit instead of trying to defend myself. I'd kind of run away from the problem instead of trying to solve it.  In my defence, I'd been starting to get sick of it anyway. 

"Fair enough. Too be good at anything you kind of have to be like that though."

I nod, "I would've loved to play a proper sport though, mum didn't want me doing anything too rough, said that I'd get hurt." 

"Wouldn't she love to see you now then?" Pete laughed. 

"Yep, a vampire and a hunter. I'm sure she'd love to know that." I sigh. It was weird thinking of my mother, she'd be freaking out if she knew what was happening here. To me, to my brother. 

"Do you talk to your parents much?" Pete asked.

I shake my head, in recent times my parents worked in a place in some developing countries. They didn't have much access to communication with the rest of the world so I barely heard from them.  I knew that they loved me, but it was hard. Besides even if they were around I don't know if I'd be living with them anyway. I'd finished school a year or so ago, and I'd had to become independent on my own.  It would've been the same somehow. 

I wonder if my parents were still here would everything that had happened this past few months happened? Maybe my brother might not have been tricked into befriending a vampire either. Would I have been so eager to assist the hunters if my parents had been around. 

Pete and I remain there for a majority of the day, just talking about everything. It was interesting hearing how normal he'd been before all this, I found it hard to imagine him any other way to how he was now. Eventually we decided that it was time to go back in.  The two of us climb down the ladder, just as we close the door we bump right into someone. 

Pete and I glance up. It's Patrick. 

"Where on earth have you two been?" Patrick asks. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

"Outside..." I smile, looking at Pete. Who nods. 

"Good, we thought when you weren't here that he might have found you both." Patrick says, the relief showing on his face.

"Who?" Pete and I ask in unison. 

"Brendon's in town again. One of Alex's boys found him lingering around town with two other vampires." Patrick explained. 

"Wait two other vampires? Where are the rest of the Dandies?" I asked. 

"We don't know. He just said that there was the red haired one and a black haired one who was a lot younger." Patrick shrugged. 

The red-haired vampire was no surprise, I knew exactly who that was. If he was trying to prove to me that he wasn't working for William he was doing a pretty awful job of it. My eyes widened as I considered the other, was the black-haired vampire my brother? No way. I couldn't jump to that conclusion. Last, I'd seen him in the cave, he'd been human. However, if my brother was working for him then who knew what he was now. 

"My brother?" I took a deep breath, asking the inevitable. If it was him then I was going to kill him for choosing this. It wasn't a path anyone should have taken. Especially if it most likely meant he was working for Brendon. I tried to remind myself that it still might not even be him. 

"It could have been, I'm sorry Cassie." Patrick spoke. 

I don't know who to be madder at, if he had my brother or Brendon. It scared me, but I think I'd have to say my brother was an enemy. Sure, growing up we hadn't had the best relationship, but he was my brother. I cared about him all the same. I didn't want to watch him get hurt by that bowler hat wearing annoyance. I suppose I always was the smart one out of the two of us. 

"I guess this mean's, he's closing in on us again. He made it out of the witches’ house." I say, as if clarifying the thoughts from my own mind to the others as I thought them. 

Pete and Patrick nod solemnly. 

There was an unspoken word between us. If Brendon had escaped did that mean that the witch lady hadn't survived. I closed my eyes. I'd barely known her but I still thought of it as my fault if she hadn't made it. 

"Oh Cassie, mail for you!" Jenna said as she found us standing there in the corridor. I noticed that she was holding a letter in her hand and pushing it towards me. Who would be sending mail to me here? I took it from her. Reading the words 'private' stamped onto the front page. I turned the letter over, finding no address.  I could see their eyes were still on me, I pointed to the word Private. They all nodded before spouting excuses of other places to be. I'd wanted to thank Pete, but he was gone.

I stood there alone with a letter contains who knew what information, carefully I broke it open and pulled out the letter inside. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soccer is also known as Football in some countries. Which is super confusing for me because we have like two version of it where I'm from (AFL and NRL) besides soccer. So, soccer here is the one with the black and white round ball. ^^


	14. Running With The Wild Things

She was alive. I couldn't believe it. 

My hand was shaking with amazement, all the guilt from the past few days seemed to melt away from me. I was so worried that Brendon had killed her trying to help us. How did she know how to get this to me? Well she was a witch after all it seemed; I had no idea what powers that meant she possessed. I had watched her freeze an entire room of Dandies in time and she had created the curse that had affected us all. There was probably a lot more to it than that, but I was glad to know she was still alive. 

That wasn't all the note contained. My eyes continued over the page, the swirly cursive writing filled with so many unanswered and new questions. The words that stick out to me the most were the ones reminding me of the cure. Not to lose hope in it, but to be patient. I sighed I hated being patient, especially when so many lives relying on this cure that I quite possibly had some larger role in. There were also words that surprised me, the ones telling me to trust a guy named Gerard, whoever that was. I guess I was going to need to find out; if he was indeed the one who held the answers to my questions. 

I moved outside, the final words of the letter had instructed me to destroy it once I read it. I gave it a second quick scan, the words still holding no more answers than the time before. I ceremoniously ripped it into millions of tiny pieces. Before leaving the scrappy remnants scattered in a large dump bin behind one of the other buildings. 

Now that I was out here, the night seemed filled with so much possibility. I didn’t really feel like going back in yet, so I decided it wouldn't hurt to go exploring. I ignored the prospect that Brendon could be back on town. I didn't care if I ran into him, I could handle him myself. I needed time to think about those words, far away from the others. Besides, I wouldn't be gone long, I'd be back before anyone even knew I was missing. 

Outside, alone. It was incredible walking through the town. Maybe it was stupid with Brendon and his loyal dogs around but I kind of wanted a night to myself. Despite spending all day outside with Pete. It was nice to be out here on my own, with a small bit of freedom again. It seemed like it was the night for couples, I guess being a Friday night it was. I headed towards what looked to be a small river, that cut the city in half. I'd seen it from the rooftop. I looked around, finding lots of small groups. I wonder what it would be like to be like that with someone. Maybe if my life was back to normal I'd have a chance to find out. 

Traffic lights flashed and blinked around me, orchestrating cars and people in an orderly fashion. Occasionally someone would destroy that balance, racing through a red light or crossing as the walk sign flashed red and counted down to zero. I saw someone a few feet in front of me trip over onto the pavement. The smell hit me instantly.  

I ignored the throbbing in my throat reminding me that I was surrounded by humans and of what I really was. I was a simple observer cut off from these people going about their average life. They had no idea of what was happening around them. Someone raced to help them up. The person was okay, it was only a small scratch. 

It was in that moment that I realized that I'd had enough. I turned away, and started to make the walk back towards Alex's place. I hear footsteps. Something jolted me as wrong, I could hear no heartbeat.

I took a deep breath. As my eyes locked with the red-haired vampire standing just outside the crowd of people that went about behind him. He was the one that had been showing up right when I needed him, but always when I was alone. Kind of sketchy, right? He stood there watching me, he was completely un-moving like a statue as people busied themselves around him.  No one seemed to notice he was even there. I did. 

I noticed him start to take a step forward and quickly I turned into an alleyway, a slight detour but I knew I'd find a way back to the house. I turned to look behind me, he'd followed me in here. Perhaps this hadn't been the smartest idea. He was just going to keep following me. So, I decided to stop and confront him. 

"You again?" I growl at him, surprising myself.

"Come on Cassie." He says, with his arms crossed, "I thought we were friends."

"No, stay away from me. Last, I checked we weren't friends, never have, never will. I've had enough of you and your switching attitudes. Every time I meet you you’re a different person." I say as I take a step backwards. I would've loved to hurt him, but I came out here for a walk not a fight. 

"Come on there's no need for any of that, I'm not going to hurt you. Remember what I told you, things aren't quite what they seem. I'm not really helping Brendon. Friends help one another, we're friends." Red-haired guy says with a charming smile. I don't think he realise that charming smiles like that don't work on me.  He moves closer towards me. "Trust me."

"You must be crazy if you think we're friends. I mean, I don't even know your name." I reply with my hands on my hips.

He frowned as if he hadn't considered the thought himself, "I guess not, it's Gerard for your information...... Anyway, I'm here to help you with your little problem you've been agonizing over since you got back." 

Wait. He knew about that. How could he? Unless he'd been at the witches’ place and heard her telling me that I had something to do with the cure. Had he somehow read the letter?  It seemed like Brendon wasn't the only one around. I hadn't seen red-haired Gerard there, but it didn't mean that he wasn't. He was either a mind reader like Taylor or must have heard everything. Then it clicked, the name written on the letter, had mentioned that I should trust Gerard. Did that mean him? No way, I couldn't believe that. I was sure it was from her, but the letter could quite honestly have come from anyone pretending to be her? Why not from Gerard. I didn't know her handwriting after all. I decide not to mention it. 

"You’re helping me? Why the heck would you hang around Brendon so much then. Your basically his second in command from what I've seen." I retort.   

"I'm really not. He's an idiot." He rolls his eyes, "I want to break the curse as much as your group."

"You what-" I start to say, a feeling of surprise running over me. How could it be that we were working towards the same thing. Brendon seemed to be trying to stop and distract us from finding it. If they had opposite goals, perhaps he really wasn't co-leading with Brendon after all like I'd first thought. Then what was he doing with Brendon then. I thought about how he'd helped me to escape from that cave. Maybe the letter was right, he was trying to help us?  

"Keep it a secret from your friends though, okay. I need to keep my cover until the curse is broken."

Wait, did this mean there was a legit way to break the curse? The letter and his words were making things seem that way. I decided against asking about that aspect because the first part confused me even more.   

"Why?" I ask, "Why not just let the others know. I have no reason to believe you. If they can't all know."

"I understand, but in time you'll see. It'll be worth not letting know. Just know that no matter how it appears, I'm on your side." 

My head runs through about a million things I could yell at him right now for being such an annoying person. If you're trying to help us then just do it, don't hang around with Brendon and confuse me on who the heck your helping. I clenched and unclenched my fingers into balls. 

"Keep your friends and enemies close Cassie, but keep your real love closer." He says in a calm voice, that sounds so distant. 

I glanced up at him, real love? What the heck was he talking about I was not in love or anything. What was with everyone at the moment, that witch lady telling me I had something to do with cure, both face to face and on that letter. Well if she'd even wrote the letter. Now here was this guy trying to tell me about true love. I wasn't some fairy tale princess in search of my one true love. I didn't believe in any of that kind of thing. I didn't even believe in soul mates. So true love was totally out of the question. 

"You must be lying to yourself if you don't know who I mean," He grins, "If I'd come here sooner maybe things might have been different, but at least there is someone." 

"Who do you mean!?" I scream at him. Even if a true love did exist, I didn't love anyone right now. Well not anymore that you'd love a friend. I loved the guys, I liked Hayley, heck I even loved Alex, Jenna and their trio of misfits. They'd been so kind to us whilst we'd been trying to find the cure. What did true love really mean, if that wasn't it? 

"Cassie, who are you talking to?" I spin around to find Jenna is standing right behind me. I must have been closer to Alex's place then I thought. 

I turn to find, that Gerard is gone. I blink, why did he always have to this? I guess it was all part of his being the two-faced vampire thing. Every time I met him he seemed to be a complete different person. I had no reason to trust him. I didn't care what some letter said.    

"No one. Just screaming to myself..." I say quickly, remembering how I wasn't supposed to say too much to the others about him. Though why I should be keeping quiet about it like he'd asked, I still wasn't sure. How could I know that he wasn't lying to me like he apparently was to Brendon? 

"What are you.........-wait." Jenna says, trailing off as she points at something in front of us. 

I follow her gaze and I can see Brendon and Gerard walking towards us. A million thoughts run through my head, I've had just about enough of that lying sneaking two faced vampire. What's to bet Gerard claiming that his helping us is all part of some elaborate plot those two concocted together. Jenna hadn't seen him, what if I was finally going crazy and I'd simply imagined that conversation a few moments ago. 

"Ah, well done Gerard, you found two of them for me." I heard Brendon say, as they approach. 

Gerard nods. Part of me is beginning to defend him, surely, he was just acting. He was on our side, wasn't he? No. He'd said that I needed to keep his cover. Who was he lying to then, me or Brendon?  Heck I'd hoped it wasn't me. Ugh, why was I even thinking about this. Gerard was probably just trying to get into my head. If so, he was doing a damn good job of it.   

I glanced back at Jenna. She hadn't encountered Brendon before, she had to have heard us talking about him and knew who he was.  

"So, I see you made it out, did you?" I ask to him.

Brendon grins. "Of course, I did, Princess. Well played getting the witch to fight your battles for you. Pity she's not here anymore to do it." 

I knew she wasn't dead, that letter had said so. I had to trust that it was correct, even if part of me still wasn't sure if she was even the one to have written it. 

"Neither are your little bodyguards either, even Hayley's gone." Brendon asked with a smirk on his face, before gesturing behind me, " Is that girl your replacement?"  

He had no idea about Jenna did he. I wasn't sure if he understood that she was quite possibly more powerful than both of us considering she was truly an original vampire. Unlike the guys and I who kind of just had borrowed walking in sunlight abilities from the death of William. 

"Humph, you don't even know me, Brendon." Jenna scoffed, "But I know you. Hayley's told me all about you, little traitor. You think with your fangs that makes you king of us all. Some of us don't follow along with that. Ever heard of the term respect your elders? I'm not afraid of you."

"Please, spare your stupid speech for someone else." Brendon laughs, Jenna and I make a glance at one another. Best time to strike him was now, and I hoped that she understood that. I'd never fought alongside her before so I wasn't sure if she was a good as Hayley, but I hoped she was something close to it. I'd work around it. 

She gives a nod, just as Brendon starts laughing. Huh?

"Ladies, relax, let's not fight yet." He grinned, before we'd even moved. My focus turned back to him.  "You haven't met the newest Dandie."

My stomach clenched and I made a step closer towards Jenna, her doing the same with me. 

He clicked his fingers, and a murky human shaped shadow emerged from behind him. 

I guess I should've seen it coming. One of my worst nightmares had come to life. 

 


	15. How Does It Feel?

My brother. 

How could he do this? 

Jake was now a vampire.  

Patrick had said it himself, hadn't he? He'd said that they'd seen another vampire hanging around with Brendon and Gerard. You'd think I'd have expected it. Nope, I still wasn't prepared to see him like this. In fact, until he'd emerged from the shadows I'd almost forgotten all about it.  

As the vampire stood into the light making his features more recognizable. I looked him up and down, he was so incredibly pale. It was almost as if I could see right through him. The moonlight glittered on his dark jet-black hair. He grinned, exposing his teeth. It was like I'd watched my brother transformed into a mini Brendon. It was awful. I wanted to puke.  

Despite my inclinations to either completely ignore or attack what was in front of me. I knew I had to stay calm. This was exactly how Brendon wanted to me to feel, the grin on his face seemed to suggest that. He was loving this, watching me struggle to comprehend why my brother had not only been helping Brendon but had also chosen this. Taking a moment to compose myself, I turned my attention back to my traitor of a brother. 

"I can't believe you'd be stupid. Once upon a time you claimed you were freaked out at me. Now look at you, don't you see that you've sided with the biggest monster in town." I glare at him with a pointed finger, he doesn't flinch. It's like talking to a brick wall, I knew my words meant nothing to him. Was he really that far gone? Instead, I glanced at Brendon, "How could you do this? My brother, really?" 

"Brendon unlike yourself is a good vampire." My brother spoke for him. His tone high and mighty, like Brendon was a god. Which he was quite the opposite. 

I closed my eyes for a moment, processing how to reply to him. How could he say that to his own sister? Sure, we hadn't been the closest growing up, I'd spent a few years at an all-girls boarding school so we only saw each other on school breaks after I was about ten. Then when I'd finished I'd moved out, and he went to boarding school.  

Yet even so, there was the possibility that he was sired to Brendon. Which would totally explain his behaviour, everything Brendon told him he'd have to do. Just like what had happened a few months ago when William tried to control us. Moments like this made me glad that I was a hunter blood. So that when Brendon had turned me, I hadn't been sired to him and forced to act this way. I guess that threw out the theory that my brother was a hunter blood like the rest of us. Well Brendon was apparently supposed to be one too, but that obviously didn't mean much about what you were like as a vampire. That was still something we were trying to work out. 

My brother had been helping Brendon long before he became a vampire though. I mean why else would he cut the rope so that I couldn't get back up to the others. So perhaps I was wrong, it seemed that my brother’s true colours were just finally showing. I never could've guessed that he'd end up being this way. 

"Pffft, Brendon a good vampire?" I almost laughed, "You're trying to tell me I'm the bad vampire. At least I don't go around killing people for fun."  

"Good thing you won't last very long." He grinned, right as he sprang his off his, using them to propel himself forward with his teeth extended. Thinking quickly, I feigned to the side. Narrowly dodging him.  He may be a vampire now, but it didn't mean that he knew my moves.  I had an advantage here. 

I kept Brendon in my peripheral vision as I turned back to face my brother. He stood there, standing in a squat with his teeth bared.  His eyes focused on mine, in an angry gaze. He was going to try and attack me, again wasn't he? 

 "I don't want to fight you." I yell at him, and I was telling the truth. I really didn't want to fight him. "We don't have to do this, this is Brendon's fight not yours." 

"Yes, we d-" He started to reply but was cut off. 

I saw two hands clasp around his shoulders, before they pull him backwards and throwing him to the ground. He let out a loud snarl as Jenna stood over him. She'd obviously gone in while I was arguing with him. He still had a lot to learn about making your evil vampire speech. My enthusiasm was short lived as he flung her away. She landed back on the ground, but started to get back up straight away. He gave her one last glance before focusing back on me. It seemed liked he wasn't going to try fighting her and neither were Brendon or Gerard. Brendon stood to the side, simply watching on with a smirk on his face. 

I guess I was going to have to be the one to fight him after all. I had an idea, I just needed Jenna to help me with it. We needed backup. There was no way I could take my brother on my own.

If I was fast enough, I knew I could get past my brother and over to Jenna before he'd even noticed that I'd moved, and if he did. Well I guess I was going to have to cross that when I came to it.

My brother launched at me again, and I quickly weaved beneath him. I stopped just behind him but beside Jenna. I'd thrown off my brothers landing, he wobbled forward, with such unlike vampire grace. Perfect.    

"Seems pretty focused on you, huh?" Jenna spoke, barely loud enough that I could hear.

I nodded, keeping an eye on him, as he righted himself. I noticed Brendon give him a nod and my brother turned around to face us again. His face full of frustration. He wasn't done yet.  Jenna took a step away, I followed with her. 

"Jenna, I need you to get the others." I say to her, with a quick glance in her direction. 

"But Cassie?" She says as she gives a face as if to suggest that she doesn't believe me, 'Are you serious? He's clearly after you.' 

"I'll handle them myself." I say, even though I'm not too sure if I'll be able to, "You'll be back before they can do any damage." 

Well I wasn't sure about that, but I at least had hope that she'd be able to do just that. 

Jenna frowned but nodded. "Alright, but one more thing. Give me your hand." She said. I trusted Jenna, so I did it. I felt something cold and metal slide into my grip. She whispered, "You don't have a weapon, right? If you need to use it on him. Do it. I've seen sired vampires like him before. He won't quit till the end."

I nodded, only half processing her words. She was suggesting if the moment came that I would need to kill him. Nothing else came to mind. "Okay."  

Jenna flashed a worried smile, before she took off away from me at high speed in a blur of motion. I saw Gerard take off after her, and I silently hoped he was still doing his being on our side thing. Otherwise we were about to be in a load of trouble if he managed to catch up with her.

Now here I was alone with two psychotic vampires and just my hand to hand combat skills and a knife to protect me. I'd fought with worse odds before. I had to believe I could do it. 

Jenna's departure had nothing to affect the situation with my brother and Brendon. I wasn't sure if either of them had even realised that Jenna and Gerard had left. My brother was still approaching me, and Brendon stood at a distance, that smirk not having left his face. I had to act, Jenna was right, they weren't going to give up. While my brother was fighting his battles, Brendon wasn't going to make a move. Much like how William had let him fight for him. I realised that I had to take out the puppet to get to the puppeteer. 

I contemplated the small knife. It would be so easy to do, with him in such an in-experienced state. I'd done it several times before against the Dandies back in Chicago. This was different though. This was my brother, he could simply have been sired to Brendon or tricked into it. What if this wasn't really him. Say if one day soon we found a cure, I would regret it eternally. How could I live with being the one to have done that?  

"Cassie!" A voice yelled, and on instinct my head swivelled to find the source, expecting it to be Jenna back already with as many of the others she could round up. All that was standing where the source had been was Brendon. I looked back to my approaching brother, to find I was too late. He knocked the knife from my hand as he punched me in the gut.  The wind was sucked out of me, I fell backwards onto the concrete. I felt so weak. Knocked out by own brother, huh? I never thought I'd see that day coming. 

*****************

"She took quite a big hit even for a vampire." A voice muttered. 

I found myself lying on a bed, surrounded in probably the smallest room of Alex's entire place. Made that way most likely by the hundreds of people occupying it right now. I looked around finding the faces of Pete, Patrick, Alex, Jenna and Alex's friends Jack, Rian and Zack. They must have brought me back here somehow. I was glad to see them, but it suggested that something had happened with Brendon and I had no idea what the story was. 

"So, -" Patrick started to speak, as I sat up. 

"Where's Brendon? My brother?" I asked the group, cutting Patrick off. It was important that they got straight to the point. 

"Long gone." Pete muttered, "Left you for dead."

Why did they leave me? I'm surprised that Brendon didn't try and kill me when I'd been knocked out, considering that had seemed to be the whole point. If they'd found me left there, then what had changed to make them leave?

"Anyway, it seems you're fine now." Jenna sighed, "But Brendon left this."

She pushed a blood red envelope towards me. I looked up at them and every face in the room nodded. I gave a hesitant glance at them, as I peeled back the envelope and pulled out the letter. Written in cursive font was what looked exactly like your ordinary party invite. 

"A party?" I glanced at them. “What does Brendon want with a party?"   

"None of us are sure, but everyone's coming back here. We will all be going to that party tomorrow night and we're going to make sure Brendon's not up to anything." Pete nodded. 

Everyone was coming back here? A new fear struck in my stomach. Didn't they all realize that this could all be part of Brendon's plot to draw us out. Why would we go to a place that would lead us straight to him? If he wanted all our abilities then a party would be the perfect trap.   

"Are all of you guys mental?!" I find myself screaming at them. 

Looks of surprise meet me. I don't think they expected me to react like that. So, I decide to elaborate. 

"Your suggesting that we actually do what Brendon wants us to do?" I ask. "You know his the crazy Dandie with a serious grudge against us, the one that would love to see us suffer eternal misery."

"Well we have a plan." Alex sighs.  

 _Because that makes it so much better,_  I think to myself sarcastically. 

"Does you plan involve us walking straight into a trap because that's exactly what it sounds like to me." I say with arms across my chest, as I move to stand up.

"Cassie. Sit, we've discussed this." Pete says in a serious tone, as he pushes me back towards my seated position on the bed. 

"Well, can't I have a say? I say it's a terrible idea. Besides, since when have you been the reasonable one Pete?" I say, glancing over at him. 

When I look at him, I realise that he has a hurt look on his face.  

"Cassie, when have you?!" He yelled,” Last time you made the plans, you went straight to the Dandies lair with Joe where William was waiting for you. Joe almost got killed because of you! You let yourself get turned against us. It was only lucky Hayley found you and snapped you out of it or we would've all died because you didn't take the time to talk to everyone. You should've told Andy and me. I can definitely see how you're the reasonable one." 

"You're bringing that back up?!" I yell back, rising from the bed and staring him in the eyes, "In case you don't remember we went to save Patrick! William would've turned him against us anyway. He already had Taylor, so it didn't make much difference. I was being reasonable, if I didn't leave with just the two of us Joe wouldn't have been able to warn you all what had happened and if you'd all come, all of us would be just more Dandies to add to Williams collection. I did the right thing Pete, don't turn around and start calling me unreasonable when you’re the one that clearly can't make plans."

"I can't make plans?" Pete yelled back.        

"Guys, don't fight please." Patrick said in a quiet voice, "What happened last time, happened. Can we just get on with working out what we're doing right now? We don't have much time."

"Well for starters Cassie has to listen first instead of trying to fight against us." Pete mumbled. 

"Well? From what I've heard so far, I think your plan's stupid! You said mine that night was, this is a hundred times worse. Brendon will be expecting all of us to come, so he'll plan for it." I protest. "He knows our abilities, our strengths, our weaknesses." 

"What can you do?" Pete asked, "Your weak. Long story short, you're not making the plans. Let us handle this."

"Pete that's not really fair." I heard someone mutter, but I barely registered who it was. I felt my anger rising.  Me? Weak? I don't think so. What was Pete trying to pull here. 

"What the hell just because I can't electric shock people, enchant people with my singing or read minds doesn't mean I can't do anything. You've seen me. I can defend myself. You're just be cruel, you know I haven't found my supposed hunter blood ability yet like the rest of you. It doesn't mean I can't do anything."

Jenna nods, "Are you trying to say Alex and I can't do anything because we're not hunter bloods." 

"No." He replies to Jenna before glancing at me, "My point is you just let you get yourself wiped out by a boy whose probably been a vampire barely a week. You can't handle leading this." 

I close my eyes, taking a moment to try and contain myself. I can't take this, I glare up at him.

"My brother, Pete. He was my brother. I hesitated once. It doesn't mean I should never be allowed to fight again." I retort my words filled with ice, "I thought we might have been starting to get along Pete. Now I realise you’re just a selfish jerk who doesn't care about anyone else's feelings."  

With that I kick at the bed and storm out the room by pushing past the others. Tears streamed effortlessly down my cheeks, the moment I walked out the door. I found a corner of the corridor and sat in it. Leaning back against the wall on the soft carpeted ground. How could he say that to me? I was going to do it. If Brendon hadn't called my name and I hadn't been so torn over killing my brother, I would've done it. Why did that suddenly mean that I had no say in the plans. Why couldn't they see that I was right? This was all just a giant trap, there had to be another way around this. 

"You know crying really doesn't suit you." A female voice says. After hearing it for weeks, I can tell it's not Jenna's though, but I do recognise it.  

Hayley and Joe are back.   

 


	16. Mighty Long Fall

Quickly I blinked away my tears. I hated it so much when people saw me cry. Still I was so glad that Hayley and Joe were back. I raced forward, wrapping them both in a giant hug whether they wanted it or not. I hadn't realised how much I missed them both these last few weeks.

I pull away from them, and said, "Please tell me you've both heard the crazy plan and think it's a terrible idea too."

Joe and Hayley glanced at one another, and for a moment I thought I was going to end up in another worthless argument over the plan. Was I really the only one who couldn't see how stupid this all was?

"Well kind of...Patrick told us on the phone and honestly I'm not so sure this is going to work either." Hayley shrugged, leaning up against the wall. "I mean there is so many things that could go completely wrong with it."

"In their defence, it's the only plan we have." Joe added. "Unless you two have something better?"

Well, I didn't exactly have anything better. Staying right here and ignoring the problem until we were a bit more prepared seemed like the best idea to me. Somehow it seemed like I was alone in that thought, maybe the others just needed to hear my reasoning.

"I don't really have anything better. I mean it's obvious, that Brendon's just trying to bring us back out into the open together." I say, "Imagine, destroying all the known hunter bloods plus the original vampires, it would be like Christmas to him. Especially if that means he would get all of our hunter blood powers the same way we received the ability to walk in sunlight from William-"

"That's our advantage though." Joe nods.

I shoot him a confused look. What does he mean that's our advantage, sure some of us have abilities but would that really be enough? It hadn't ever helped us that much since that night with William. Since when would him trying to take our abilities help us?

"He's trying to take our abilities-" I start to say when Joe shakes his head.

"That's now what I meant." Joe continued, "He'll think that we have no chance of defending ourselves. I think he's forgotten that Andy, Pete, Patrick and myself know that place inside and out."

I glance at Hayley who shrugs, she doesn't seem to know any more about this than I do. She clearly doesn't know either. How would they know the place that well, this mansion was miles away from Chicago?

"Why?" I ask, thinking that he's not going to continue much further.

Joe paused for a moment as if he wasn't sure whether he was going to say anymore, Hayley and I both gesture for him to continue. If they knew the place, I wanted to know as much as possible before we went there.

"It's kind of funny that he wants to meet up there really." Joe shook his head in disbelief, "Considering, that was the last place we were all friends"

The palace mansion was the last place they'd be friends with Brendon, I thought recalling the name of the parties' location. Earlier, the words hadn't meant much to me but danger. Mansions were generally huge and pretty maze like if you had no idea where you were going. There was a lot of rooms and placed that Brendon could create traps for us. Even if they knew the place was this really a good idea?

"Wait, back track just a second there? You four always talk about how Brendon split up from you four for god knows what reason, but what actually happened?" Hayley asks before the words can leave my own mouth. I guess she really didn't know about any of what had gone on between the five of them either.

Personally, from what I'd picked up to this moment was that Brendon had become a vampire and that was the end of their friendship. To think that there was more to it than that connected most likely to this place, made me curious.

"There's still a few things I'm unsure of that happened that night," Joe sighs, "but there was a massive masquerade ball in town. There was word of a vampiric presence there. We had an invite, and Brendon desperately wanted to go. He begged and pleaded for the days leading up to it. We were all hunters, so naturally if there were supposed to be vampires somewhere, we went to check it out. All five of us were human, neither Pete or Brendon had been turned yet. We'd had a few close calls the weeks prior to it. Brendon and Pete had been captured by William whilst they were out hunting with Andy. Thankfully Andy escaped and Patrick and I could help get them out of there. We always thought it was just him trying to get back at us for hunting his Dandies, but as you know there was much more to William's plan."

I knew the answer to that, William was trying to find Hunter bloods to see if he could control them. He'd tried it with Hayley's group and failed so he went onto theirs. From what I knew Brendon was the only known exception. Meaning that he could be controlled by the one that turned him or so we'd thought until we'd killed William and he'd remained just as jerky as ever. Maybe he wasn't a hunter blood like the rest of us after all? They'd all seemed certain that William had been the one who turned him.

"So, the five of you actually went to the ball then?" I ask, starting to see parallels between our situation and theirs back then.

Joe nodded, "Of course we did. Like usual once we got there we split up into teams, Pete and Brendon were to search the outside perimeter while Andy, Patrick and myself scouted the inside. We were supposed to meet back up about two hours later, or earlier if someone needed help. When the two hours were up, the three of us returned, but neither Pete or Brendon did."

I had a bad feeling where this was going, if Pete and Brendon had been searching the outside that meant they had been at a greater risk of being caught by the Dandies. What happened that had caused such a large rift between them.

"I'm guessing you went looking for them?" Hayley asked.

"Of course, we did. Neither of them had radioed or texted that something had gone wrong or that they were caught somewhere. The three of us stuck together as we searched outside for them. We thought they'd really been taken, far away from where we were searching. Then we heard a noise from behind us, coming from the balcony." He paused, "We looked up. It was much too late by the time we did. William was standing on the edge of the balcony with Brendon by his side. We stood there staring, I couldn't believe it, Brendon was a vampire too. I just remember hearing William making him attack Pete. We were positive he was dead."

"But he came back as a vampire then?" I ask, without thinking too much about it.

"Not too loud." Joe shook his head, his eyes flickering back to the corridor which lead to the room I had come from. "But yes."

No wonder Pete was acting like he was, if that had been the place that he had been turned and Brendon had pretty much betrayed them. It must have held a lot of awful memories. I knew I had no wish to go back to the place that the Dandies had kept me. I suddenly felt bad for what I'd said. Here I was yelling at him about going off at me for hesitating over my brother. When I'd really been doing the same back to him.

"So that's why it's so weird that he wants to hold a party like that there again." Joe added.

"Well it's not like he can exactly re-enact that part, thankfully." Hayley said. "William's dead, Pete's already a vampire...."

Joe shrugged, "I don't know either, but I think we have to go there in some form. He's invited innocent people, not just us. If we don't get there, he'll probably get bored and you know what will happen then."

He didn't say it but I knew what he meant innocent humans would be killed. As much as I didn't like walking into a trap, I couldn't handle being responsible for that either. Yeah in retrospect, I really shouldn't have been yelling at Pete for his plan. He had been thinking of them too and I'd called him selfish.

I nod, "Yeah, you're right."

"So now what?" Hayley sighed, "Do we just have to listen to the others and hope it doesn't get us all killed."

Joe shrugged, and looked at me. A plan was already beginning to form in my mind, I just had to hope that it would work.

"I guess we have to." I say, "But we're doing it on mine and everyone's terms as well, not just Pete's."

***************************

I marched in the room that I'd woken up in only half an hour before hand. Everyone that had been in here when I woke up was still in there, a complicated map of a building laid in front of them. Hayley and Joe trailed behind me.

As my boots struck the ground, it altered them to my presence. I suddenly found a bunch of eyes staring at me. Pete glared at me, before turning back to the map. Alex glanced back and struck him in the elbow. Pete turned around. If looks could kill, I'd probably be dead by now. Wait, technically I was already dead but whatever.

I glanced at the group, focusing on Pete, he was exactly who my next words were to be directed to, "I'm still mad at you for what you said, but if you're willing to let us all work together on a better plan for infiltrating this party and not getting ourselves killed than I'll co-operate."

Pete frowned. He was still going to be a stubborn jerk wasn't he. I crossed my arms, I had to remain strong. I had a point and I was going to be sure to make it.

"Pete." Patrick spoke in a warning tone. It kind of reminded me of the way that parents talked to their kids when they weren't being nice to another child, or when they made them kiss grandma.   

Pete glanced back at him and sighed before turning back to me, "Okay."

There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief in the room, but everyone seemed a little hesitant. Including me.

"Now, let's have a look at this plan." Hayley said, squeezing her way into the group between Jenna and Rian. Thus, breaking the awkwardness.

I followed suit moving between Alex and Jenna, and Joe went and stood with Pete and Patrick.

I made a glance over the map, the building was two storied plus a basement with a staircase connecting the two main floors. There was a large ballroom on the first floor, and a series of connecting rooms on the second. There was a balcony out to the side of the second floor, my eyes scanning quickly past it. I didn't want to think of what Joe had revealed happened there. There was a large garden surrounding the building. There was so many places Brendon and his Dandies could be waiting for us. Could we really pull this off?

"Well obviously we're going to need to split up. If everyone's helping then that's thirteen of us, we'll be able to work in teams but still cover a large area." Patrick spoke as he eyed over the map.

Alex nodded, pointing to areas as he spoke of them, "We can have a few of us remain in main ballroom, but we can also send a group upstairs to keep tabs up there. Then another group can monitor the outside and the garden."

That sounded fair, I couldn't argue with Alex's logic.

"So, who are we sending where?" Pete asked.

"Well we can't really work it out until Taylor and Andy come back." Hayley spoke. She was right, if they were coming back we shouldn't be making too many plans without them. I knew they'd follow what we said, but my conditions for helping was that everyone had to have the opportunity to have a say if they wanted it. So, we had to wait for them.

"And when will that be?" Pete frowned.

"A few hours maybe?" Patrick shrugged.

Pete sighed, "Damn, well I guess it'd be easier if we're all here."

"Well while we wait, shall we do a little bit of training then?" Jenna asked.

Alex nodded, "We do have the training space. It's pretty large, despite our numbers everyone would fit."

Despite agreeing to go ahead with this plan. I still didn't think that any of this was a good idea, but I hadn't practiced for days. It would do me good. I wasn't getting defeated by my brother again and it was best to at least give myself a better chance of doing so.

"That's a good idea." I nodded.

"Yeah, you know we're going to have to get used to fighting in a dress." Hayley grimaced.

I pulled a face there was absolutely no way I was going to fight in a dress. Despite it being almost a given that I would need to. Beside Hayley, Jenna didn't look very happy about it either.

"Come on do we really have to wear dresses?" She asked, "I don't mind wearing one with it being some ball or something, but fighting in one really?"

"It says formal, so unless you want to suit up. You're going to have to." Pete spoke pointing to the invitation where it said that formal dress was required and a mask.

The three of us frowned, we didn't have a lot of choice. It was almost like Brendon wanted to make it harder for us. I didn't like the idea of fighting in a dress but we would stick out way more if we didn't.

"I guess if we wear our boots underneath, it'll be fine. That's what I plan to do." Hayley nodded. "Just because you're wearing a dress doesn't mean you can't act tough or fight off a hoard of Dandies."

I frowned. I still wasn't sure about this. Jenna nodded. "I like that idea, that should be at least a little better."

"Besides," Hayley said looking at me, "We managed to get them out of that prison cell in dresses. I think we can handle it." She said, pointing to Pete, Patrick and Joe.

I could still remember that night clearly, I'd been still human then. It was the first time I'd met Hayley, it seemed crazy to think that I'd spent most of the night not trusting her. She was right though, we had made it out of there in those fancy dresses we had worn to make us look more like we were Dandies coming to collect them for William. We hadn't needed to fight much, but we had made it out of there.

Jenna glanced at us, "Geez you two, a rescue mission in dresses? That would've been tricky."

"It was, trust me. It's a long story," Hayley said with a glance at me. I knew she was right, a lot had happened that night.

With that, we followed Jenna and Alex down to the training space, at the basement of the building. I hadn't been anywhere near this before or knew that it existed. I'm surprised with knowing what was happening that they hadn't brought it up.

I glanced around, the room was different to ours back at the warehouse; more like a combination of a gymnastics and a boxing gym than a vampire hunters training lair. It would do though. There was plenty of room to train. I noticed a couple of things that could be useful; there was large sponge pit in the corner of the room with a jump mat. To the side of the room, was a small boxing area. The centre of the room was covered with a large blue matted area. I hadn't used much of this equipment before, but I had a feeling they had.

Hayley sighed, "Geez, this brings back memories."

Jenna grinned, "Of what, when I totally outdid you on flips in the foam pit?"

"No way! My flips are much better, I'm practically a ninja. You go back to your boxing and yoga." Hayley retorted with a fake offended smile.

"Let's have a re-match?" Jenna grinned.

Hayley nodded. "You're on."

Alex was already showing Pete, Patrick and Joe some of the equipment they had here. I was tempted to follow them when I felt something grab around my wrist.

"We need a fair judge." Jenna said, pulling on me, "Cassie, follow us."

I nodded. Taking one final glance back at the group looking at the weapons. I guess I'd have a chance to look at them later.

I followed the two of them over to the foam pit, making a seat right beside it. It wasn't the most comfortable of places, but I was sure I wasn't going to end up sitting here for long. I had to train too after all.

Hayley and Jenna took it in turns to make a jump from the ground into a flip and land into the foam pit. They were both pretty good, they both managed to land safely barely disturbing the foam pit beneath them. Though I had to agree with Hayley's earlier re-mark she was practically a ninja when it came to her flips. I sat there watching them for a while, Hayley was having another turn when Jenna sat beside me.

"Come on, Cassie. Your turn now." Jenna spoke.

I blinked for a moment, they were both so good. Sure, I'd fluked a few good flips in my time but they were nothing compared to these two. I'd probably just embarrass myself and send half the foam squares flying. They really seemed to want me to try though, so I nodded.

I walked up to the step right before the foam pit, and took a step backwards. I propelled off my back feet and flipped onto the mat, landing straight into the foam pit. I wobbled falling backwards. They'd made landing without falling look easy. I guess in real life gymnasts didn't have supernatural vampire powers and grace.

After a few more failed attempts I gave up. Turning instead to some boxing. Surprisingly it was like how I usually trained just there were gloves and those weird flat-pads that I couldn't remember the name of.

Eventually everyone started to leave, until I was the last one left. Jenna and Pete had left a few moments earlier, I'd told them I'd be up in a minute. I felt exhausted, which was odd. So, I just laid myself down on the soft spongy floor letting the cool surface of the mats sink into my skin. I let my eyes close.

***********************

_Everything was pitch black. I glanced around me finding only further darkness. My hands fell to what I thought was the ground, a strange sharp, soft feeling coursed through them. It was hard to describe, but it freaked me out._

_"Hello?" I yelled._

_No answer._

_Well that was useless, there was probably no one here. Wherever here was?_

_Then I could hear a soft thrumming noise. I pricked up my ears to listen. The noise seemed to go on for hours then I heard a howl, just as the darkness burst into a bright white light._


	17. Scars (I Need Your Help)

As we walked towards the gates of the Palace Mansion I had to admit, Brendon did have some great taste in decorating. The outside garden was illuminated with twinkling fairy lights. A large fountain stood in the centre of the courtyard with fragmented rainbow lights shimmering through the stream of water. The mansion itself was huge, probably the size of a small country. It was hard to tell in the dark but it was a massive dusty white building that looked exactly like its namesake, a total palace. If I didn't know any better perhaps I would've found it romantic and totally amazing. Like most girls I'd imagined myself on at least one occasion of going to a fancy ball, in a beautiful palace in a dress just like a fairy-tale princess. It was so weird to have that come to life, but be unsure of how it would turn out, would the night become a fairy-tale or a horror story.

It sucks knowing that Brendon couldn't have simply invited us here just for a simple party. The thought that he had put all this together for a darker purpose put a slight dampener on things. I looked away from the pretty distraction of lights, I had to focus. As nice as everything looked, it wasn't what we were here for. We had to find out what Brendon was doing and what he wanted us here for, then get in and out as quickly as possible with the least amount of altercations as possible. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be easy, though.

Beside me, Pete looked uncomfortable. I figured he was nervous more so than any of us about tonight. Joe's story was a reminder, of how much this place would most likely hold awful memories for him. Honestly, I had no wish to go back to that dark cavernous room that Brendon had turned me in. I didn't really know what to say to him though, that it would be alright? That the same thing wouldn't happen again? Brendon could still find a way to turn Andy or Joe and history could repeat itself all over again. I couldn't even promise myself that nothing bad would happen tonight. Made worse by a horrible dream that I'd had yesterday, when I managed to fall asleep on the training room floor. All I could remember from it was darkness and howling. Maybe I was being superstitious but I couldn't help but feel as if it was some sort of omen for what was to come. There had seemed something so real to it, I couldn't work out what though. Alright, so maybe even that was a little crazy.

I glanced around, all the guys in our group were dressed in black tuxedos. Andy, and Taylor had returned late last night and had agreed to our plan with amazingly little fuss. Jenna, Hayley and myself were dressed in simple black strapless dresses, they fell slightly above our knees. Apparently, that would make it easier to fight if need be. I hope they were right. My dress had simple ruffles at the top. I was surprised to find that it suited me. As it was a masquerade, each of us in the group wore a decorated mask in varying colours. My own mask was a red and black harlequin mask. My hair was pulled up into a curly pony tail up do. When I'd looked in the mirror earlier I'd been amazed at how much it didn't look like me. I was almost unrecognizable. Which was kind of perfect considering we were trying to blend in as much as possible.

We came to a large black iron with swirling patterns. A guard stood at the door, and there was a line of people dressed as we were passing him their invitations. I frowned, we had to go through a door guy. This wasn't good. What if Brendon had set up the invite so that it would alert him to our presence or he'd even have told the guard to look out for us.

I must have been the only one worried because when it was our groups turn Pete showed the invitation to the security at the gate, and he let us in without hesitation or questioning. The moment we took our first step, I was half expecting a cage to come down and trap us at any moment but it didn't. It seemed this was a legit party after all. It still didn't change the fact that there was a good chance that Brendon now knew that we were here. Nope, I wasn't going to think about that or I'd be worrying about what he was doing the entire time. I wasn't good at hiding my emotions but I had to at least pretend to be enjoying myself to blend in with the crowd if we still hadn't been spotted.

I looked around us there were people in gorgeous dresses, tuxes and masks everywhere. Electronic dance music thumped through the speakers, made louder by sensitive hearing. I winced a little but managed to tune it out enough that I could faintly hundreds of individual heart beats, most of these people were humans. I suddenly felt glad that we'd come here, Joe was right if we hadn't a lot of people's lives could have been at risk. I couldn't obviously gauge the number of vampires though, it took a little more than listening to a few heartbeats to find them in a crowd like this.

"Okay, we're breaking off into our groups now." Pete yelled over the music. "We'll meet back in an hour."

I'd kind of figured we'd stay together a little longer, but it seemed we were already to conspicuous in our large group. Most people around us were either in couples or small groups of three and four. My eyes met with both Hayley's and Jenna, I still thought it was a little unfair to put the three girls who had to fight in dresses together, but there was no point in arguing. At least we were remaining in groups it could be much worse if I had to go around here alone.

"So, remind me again, why the three girls in dresses are all sticking together?" Jenna asked, gesturing to Hayley and me. It seemed Jenna wasn't about to take it. We'd already spent half the night prior arguing about it with them, but it seemed at the last moment it still wasn't over.

"I already told you." Pete growled at her, sounding quite frustrated, "It will look less conspicuous with you three together. Besides I thought you three worked well together."

Well he was right, the three of us would probably work quite well. Our strengths made up for our weaknesses. I hadn't done much with Jenna before, but both of us worked quite well with Hayley so I guess that logic won out. It didn't matter as much to me as it seemed that it did to the others.

Our task was to locate Brendon and the rest of the Dandies if they were even around here so that they wouldn't have an opportunity to harm anyone. Obviously, we couldn't remain together in such a large group so Pete, Alex and Taylor were to scour the garden. Patrick and Joe were taking the ballroom; and Rian and Zack were keeping an eye around the front gate that we'd just been through.

We were the group assigned to the area upstairs. With a quick farewell we left the boys, the three of us entered the ballroom. People waltzed around the room in couples. I spotted a large curved marble staircase at the end of the ballroom, it was crowded with people. We stuck to the side of the room, narrowly avoiding the waltzes and once we finally reached them; climbed the stairs onto the second floor. It was much quieter, with only a few groups of people sitting up there. A couple sat kissing on the side of the step, and a group of about five teenage girls sat in a circle chattering excitedly. None of them looked like Dandies. I could hear their heartbeats, and not one of them looked pale enough to be a vampire. Had we been wrong about this being a Brendon thing? Perhaps this was his plan, send us here while he did something else. I wasn't too sure on that either, it's not like we'd been looking for very long.

As we walked further, the groups thinned out until we reached the end of the corridor, coming to a few seemingly empty rooms. There were three doors, all slightly ajar. Peeking in they just looked like total darkness.

We weren't finished with them yet though.

"Alright, I'll check that room. You two split and take the others." Jenna suggests backing away from the third door and glancing at Hayley and me.

"Should we really be splitting up, even over such a small distance?" Hayley asks, her eyes filled with concern.

"Put it this way, if anyone's in there, we're close enough that you'll hear me scream." I say, as bravely as possible.

Hayley gave a small but nervous grin, "Good point, let's just hope it doesn't get to that."

With that, the three of us split ways and I walked into my assigned room, it was dark in here, even for me. My hand found the light switch. I breathed a sigh of relief as the light illuminated the entire room. It was basically empty; the only sign of furniture was a canopy bed off to one side of the room. There still could be something here so I decided to check it. I moved closer, pulling away the canopy's curtains.

Nothing.

Relief washed through me, well there certainly wasn't any Dandies waiting for us in here. I was about to turn around when the light suddenly switched off. A blown fuse perhaps, then the door slammed behind me. No way was that a coincidence.

I blinked a few times trying to get my eyes to adjust to the lack of light in the room. I felt something grab me from behind. I tried to scream and bite down on my captor but I was pushed forwards onto something soft, the canopy bed I assumed. I tried to break through and punch at them like Jenna had taught me with the boxing. Then I was pulled backwards and dragged forwards. I tried dragging my feet but it was futile.

There seemed to be a square of dull light that I was being dragged towards, the window I assumed. Sure enough, I was pushed into the light falling forwards before landing on stone. My eyes adjusting to the light, I realised with a sink in my stomach that I was on the balcony. The exact balcony from Joe's story. I'd never been here before but this balcony struck a wave of fear through me.

Now in the dim light, I could see that my captor was of course my brother. He dragged me forward. Towards a waiting Brendon and Gerard.

"Well, well." Brendon grinned. "Look what we've caught."

I glanced at Brendon shooting him my iciest glare. On the ground, I could faintly see the light from the window we'd come through. Hayley and Jenna had to know I was missing now. Sure, enough when I focused I could hear them calling for me, muttering something about the door being locked, I wanted to be out there with them. Not pulled into some mess with Brendon again. Why hadn't we decided to stick together to check the rooms, my brother certainly couldn't have won a fight against the three of us. I managed to glance back to the window that we'd come through. The blind was now covered so I wasn't sure if they would be able to see me out here on the balcony with Brendon. God, I hoped that they'd find me before he could get too far with whatever he had me out here for.

My brother pushed me to the ground like a rag doll directly in front of Brendon; with such force that I barely had much effort left to recover. I winced, either I was weak today or he sure was strong now. He stood behind me like a security guard with his arms crossed tightly against his chest.

"Good job, Jake." Brendon said, "Now do what I told you to next."

Next? Well knowing him of course there was more.

Instinctively I flinched away from my brother, expecting him to attack me. Instead he simply disappeared down the balcony behind me. I heard a slight thud as his feet touched the ground. I guessed what he had been sent to do didn't involve me, but somehow that worried me more.

"Ah, I knew this was a great idea. Now I get to see the princess in a dress." Brendon grinned, standing over me. He knew that I was still healing from where my brother had hurt me. "You certainly tried tonight. I'm impressed"

I didn't respond, he was just playing me. He lent down pulled the mask from my face, I reached to grab it from him but he held me back down.

"Uh, uh, Princess. I don't want to talk to you from behind that mask. No matter how beautiful it may be." Brendon spoke tossing the mask away.

Damn, I'd liked that mask.

"You don't need it though." He grinned.

I raised an eyebrow, what was he playing at here? He seemed to be showering me in compliments. That was just a tad odd, especially from here.

"Brendon what are you playing?" I growled, keeping my eyes directly trained on him.

"Well now that you've asked, I suppose it's time to tell you what you're really here for. I'll let all your friends walk out of here safely, if you agree to marry me."

Marry him? Now where had I heard this before? William many months earlier. Where was the sudden motivation for that coming from, I could vaguely remember Hayley warning me against ever marrying someone that I truly didn't love for some reason or another. Did I think he was that stupid? This was another of his plots. Considering we hated each other, even for that brief slightly regrettable moment where we'd been working on the same team.

"You know it's funny how your sounding more and more like William each day. Wanting to marry me? No prizes for second alright, it's getting a bit old you know." I say back at him. "William tried that too, it didn't get him very far."

After what I'd said I expected him to come back with Princess named retort, but he didn't. Not quite.

"I'm serious though, lovely." He smiled, his voice sounding surprisingly genuine. "Seeing you in this dress it's changed my whole perspective. I'd give you whatever you'd like. Neither you or your friends will be harmed. I have my Dandies on standby, don't think that we haven't known where you all are the entire time."

I was right, they'd have to had someone watching the gate as everyone entered. They probably even had someone watching the security system in the entire place. How had I not thought of that earlier. We should have had smaller groups and sent someone in to knock that part out. All the best plans came after the gun had gone off, didn't they?

"No." I growled at him. "I don't care what you offer me. Marriage is for people who love each other and I certainly don't love you."

Brendon frowned, looking hurt. I was confused, he was acting, wasn't he? Yet the hurt looked kind of real.

"You sure? Think of all the-"

"Brendon don't hurt yourself trying to come up with something to say to me." I say interrupting him. "You'll never convince me."

The cat like grin emerged again, "In that case."

He pushed me backwards onto the balcony's railing. A horrible thought struck me, I was no longer useful to him, was I? I had no more cards in my hand. Except one. I glanced behind Brendon noticing that Gerard was standing there still, almost emotionless. I thought he was trying to help me? Surely, he would try now?

"Gerard please." I yelled desperately. Hoping that now would be the time for him to show that he really was on our side.

Yet, his facial expression remained harsh and cold. My heart sunk, I just knew he wasn't really helping us. Even a double agent would've cracked by now surely.

Brendon laughed, seemingly amused by my whole situation, "Like Gerard's going to help you, he's one of us Princess. He'd never help a lowly vampire hunting, vampire, hunter blood like you."

Gerard doesn't respond, but it doesn't seem to bother Brendon. His grin seems to grow even wider.

"You know I could give you the enjoyable experience of you watching my Dandies attacking your friends but I don't think I have much use for you anymore Princess. So sad that this where your fairy-tale should end."

My mind raced, I was going to die exactly as Pete had been supposed to. Here on this dammed balcony. I had to snap out of this, I wasn't going to just let him win. I focused my attention solely on Brendon. I couldn't let him get the best of me. I was no princess. I could fight back.

"My stories only just beginning Brendon." I snarled back.

"Oh really? What are you going to do now, Princess? Nowhere to go?" Brendon grinned, clutching me tighter, "You probably wouldn't make the landing in your state. Vampires heal fast but not that fast. I'm surprised your still even standing."

That was it.

"Things are going to change Brendon starting with you." I growled, lurching forward, trying to push him off me so that I could escape. I thought I was succeeding, when I felt something sharp dig into my arm. The pain rushes through me instantly causing me to crumple to the ground as a sharp shooting pain instantly flies up my wrist and into my whole body. Above me, Brendon smiles with a big grin on his face. "You'll be out of the way soon enough and I'll be unstoppable once your powers are mine. Shame you won't be around to see it. In a few moments, you'll be wishing you took me up on my offer."

I screamed as a flaring pain went shooting through my arm again, what had he done to me?


	18. The Reckless And The Brave

I felt like I was frozen, it was as if my body had been almost completely paralysed. Pain raced its way through my entire body, despite being frozen it felt as though my whole body was on fire. A scream echoed in my ears, I realised it was my own.

I glared at Brendon, the flickering fairy lights from the garden danced precariously around my eyes. I felt light headed and dizzy. This was all so wrong.

"What did you do to me-" I growled, as I tried to pull myself up again, finding that it was almost useless right now. The only things that seemed to be able to move normally were my mouth and eyes. It was terrifying having no control over my body like this. All I could work out was that it had something to do with Brendon because I'd been fine only a few moments earlier.

"Not long now Princess, a werewolf's venom is poisonous to vampires, even special ones like yourself." Brendon grinned almost cat-like. "Best part of all, there's no cure."

No. How could this be? After everything we'd been through, I was going to die from werewolf's venom?

I knew he was right though. I remembered reading it in a book whilst we were doing research, I'd kind of dismissed it though. I'd never expected something like that to happen to me, considering I'd never met a werewolf before or knew that there was even any around. Brendon must have though, how else would he have gotten his hands on something so deadly?

If it was going to kill me, surely there was something I could do. Anti-venom? Surely Patrick or Alex might know, but neither of them were here. I had a feeling there wasn't enough time for it anyway; even if they were. I mean we'd had enough trouble finding one cure for vampirism let alone one to cure a vampire that had been bitten by a werewolf.

I tried to move, but the pain was too much. I sunk down to the ground. Brendon simply stood there. I realised that he wasn't going to stake me or anything. He was just going to give me this painful death. I managed to pull my neck up to look at him, "They'll kill you for this, Brendon." I snarled.

He simply laughed, "I'd like to see them try. After all, in a few moments all your special abilities will be mine. They won't stand a chance. I mean your little hunter friends aren't even, here are they? There's no one here to rescue you now." He paused, "Besides my Dandies are waiting for them, as we speak their probably busy with them."

I honestly just wanted to fight him for that. He'd orchestrated all of this. I knew it had been a trap, but it hadn't occurred to me that it was a trap for me. I was the one who shouldn't have come here. I had no idea what special capabilities I had, yet it seemed everyone wanted their hands on them. I guess I'd never find out now. I wouldn't even be alive to see what Brendon did with them. My eyes felt wet, damn, I couldn't cry here. I didn't want Brendon to have the satisfaction of seeing that.

"We could've done this the easy way princess," He continued, when I hadn't replied, "If only you'd just agreed to marry me, then we'd have been able to share the powers and nobody would've had to die. Shame really."

So, if I'd agreed to marry Brendon that would've meant that we would share the powers I had? Whatever they were. It made sense what Hayley had said, after last time with William, that I should only ever marry someone I loved. If that meant that they shared whatever this 'amazing' power was with me, I could see the dangers. Not that unwillingly choosing this was much better anyway. Brendon was probably going to destroy the world no matter what I did.

"So, what is this great power anyway?" I ask, surely, he'll tell me now that there's not much I can do.

He starts to grin and then it fades a second later as Brendon lets out a snarl as he's pulled backwards away from me. I saw a figure appear and shove him to the ground, before stamping their foot on his stomach. I heard a loud snarl.

Was it Gerard?

No.

I blinked again, my eyes catching on a dark-haired person not a red haired one. It was Pete, now standing menacingly above Brendon. He had been the one to throw him away from me. Yet how had he known where I was? Brendon had seemingly had me dragged away here on purpose so that I'd be away from the party. If it had been Jenna or Hayley I might have understood, but he'd said the Dandies would be on the others by now. Though I shouldn't underestimate Pete, he was probably one of the strongest physically of us all.

"You stay away from her, you ass." I heard him yell. Just as I fall to my knees as another bout of pain wracked my body.

Brendon hadn't been joking, it could kill me. I clutched the injection site as if I could somehow pull the pain right from it. I doubled over. Letting out a scream in pain. I could feel my body trying to fight it, but it was useless the wolf's toxins were too strong for me. No amount of vampire healing could solve this it seems.

"Cassie, oh my-" Pete said. He stood right before me, his face full of shock and horror. I hadn't even noticed him move from Brendon, as he stood now only meters from me. I must have looked like a total wreck right now.

"I'm as good as dead Pete." I say my voice ragged, as I managed to hold myself at an angle that I could at least look at him. "Surely, you heard what Brendon did."

"No, you're not." Pete spoke in disbelief, "You can't. He was lying to scare you surely. We're going to find a way to fix this. You're going to survive this, you have to."

I shake my head, and manage to give him a sad smile, "A miracles not going to happen this time. I'm sorry Pete."

My eyes dart upwards as I notice Brendon was pulling himself up and about to launch himself at Pete. I'm about to cry out when, Pete raises his hand out and looks back at him, "I thought I told you to get away."

Brendon went flying backwards airborne in a flurry of electric lights. I knew Pete was powerful but I hadn't been expecting that. I noticed Gerard dashed forward and grabbed Brendon from behind. He appeared to be holding him in place, Brendon struggled furiously in his arms. He wasn't going to interrupt us now.

This all did prove one thing, Gerard was telling the truth. He was helping us. Now must've been the right moment it seemed. All I'd done was tell him he wasn't. What could I possibly say to excuse myself from disbelieving him. It was useless though, there was no longer any time left for me to say it.

"Don't give up yet. We'll find something." Pete says, bringing my attention back to him. He's kneeled to my level.

I manage to shake my head, my hand trembling, "You heard him, I don't have much time left."

"No. We'll-I'm so sorry. I should've done more tonight." Pete says. "Jenna was right, we shouldn't have sent you three off together."

"It wouldn't have mattered." I say.

The two of us are silent. There was so much I could say to Pete, but I just can't find the words.

"I feel so bad that you became involved in all this." He finally spoke, his voice hollow.

I shook my head, my voice constricted, I knew what he was talking about, "You guys saving me that night was the best thing, I wouldn't even regret it for a moment. These last few months I've felt more alive than I did before that." I could feel the tears that I'd been suppressing coming right down my face. I didn't want to leave this place. Pete, Patrick, Joe, Andy, Hayley, Taylor, Jenna, Alex, his friends. All these amazing people I'd met on this crazy ride. After everything we'd been through I couldn't believe it was over for me. Brendon was right, my fairy tale was over.

"I didn't understand you at first when you came to us. The girl from the coffee shop that had tried to talk down a group of vampires." He half-laughed. I kind of did too, he was right. Looking back now it was stupid. I'd seen someone picking a fight out in front of the coffee shop so I thought I'd try breaking it up, not realising what I was really dealing with. If I'd known what I was up against I probably would've quit my superhero act as soon as it started. I'd hate to think what would've really happened to me if they hadn't all shown up.

"I thought you were pretty insane. Then I got to know you and-" Pete continued, as his hand went to my chin, "Anyway, I'm going to regret it for all eternity if I don't do this. Please don't hate me."

Just like that he kissed me right on the lips.

It was amazing, I found myself kissing back without hesitation. I'd only ever had one kiss before, part of a dare at a high school party. The boy had been kind of gross. This was different. I realised, heartrendingly at the last moment that I loved him. I was having a bad run of realizing things at the last minute today.

My mind went hurtling back to those nights under the stars and when we'd first came to Alex's, when we both hadn't been able to sleep. Him teaching me to fight. Sure, he'd been a total ass sometimes, like he had yesterday but there was something that he made me feel that I'd never felt around anyone else. Why hadn't I realised this earlier. I guess sometimes it takes seeing your life flash before your eyes to realise these kinds of things.

I felt the tears fall harder, but as I did I became acutely aware of something different. The pain in my arm had stopped. Had it really stopped or was I that far gone that I couldn't feel it any longer?

I felt something thump against my chest. I heard it again. Twice. I looked up in surprise. Was I imagining things. I raised my hand up to his cheek. Pulling his face away and glancing at him at arm's length.

"Pete you're human." I gasp, noticing all the things that had made him a vampire were gone.

He pulls away and looks at me. "S-so are you."

I put my hand to my chest. I can feel a steady beating that I haven't felt in months. I glance back up at him in surprise.

"How did we?" I ask.

"I don't know." He shook his head in equal disbelief.

 _You're the cure Cassie,_ a voice rung inside me from my memories. Maybe just maybe I was?


	19. Long Live The Car Crash Hearts

I was now convinced that I was either dead or dreaming.

There was absolutely no way that could've worked. There's no way I made it through that. I was dead now, I had to be. No vampire was supposed to ever survive that. Certainly not me.

When I glanced at Pete, who was staring back at me with as much shock as I felt. I realised that I couldn't be imagining it, he'd noticed too.

A vampire couldn't survive it, but a human could.

I pulled back, raising my own hand to my chest, a steady beating greeting me. I felt no pain either. I appeared to be perfectly fine now and amazingly, human. It was unbelievable by itself, but so was Pete. It wasn't just us though; as I looked past Pete I found Gerard had released Brendon from his grip, who was on the ground in front of him on all fours, breathing heavily. He looked kind of awful but both were human too.

What the hell had changed? It wasn't as though someone had found an entire cure for vampires in the past few seconds. Or had they. More like had we?

"Is this real? Are we really- " Pete started to ask aloud. I could tell what he was trying to say. It meant more when someone else was trying to say it.

"I-" I started to say.

"It's her ability." Gerard answered quickly from behind us.

Her? He was talking about me, right? Pete glanced at Gerard skeptically, and I didn't blame him everyone had passed him off as being the red-haired bad guy that hung around with Brendon. Especially after our last encounter where I think they'd finally seen him.

"I did what now?" I ask, my voice coming out slightly high pitched.

"She's a healer." Gerard continued but he seemed to be talking to Pete; not really me from his use of pronoun, "The power to destroy the vampire curse could only work if she was faced with a life or death situation of her own as a vampire."

"Then why didn't it start kicking in earlier after Brendon first attacked me?" I ask, immediately seeing the total flaw in his whole theory.

"You needed to be faced with both love and death, or as the prophecy goes,  _Adversus lacrimis sanguine venator remedio amoris et omnia mortis curabitur_ " He speaks, "it means 'The hunter blood with the healing tears when faced with both love and death that all will be cured.'"

Me. So I really was the cure? It made sense now. What the witch had said to me. That was my power. If it had the ability to heal; it must have been how I'd healed Pete when Brendon had staked him last time. I'd been claiming all this time that I didn't have an ability, like the others yet perhaps mine was the most powerful. But why would've everyone have wanted it so bad, vampires already had superhuman healing abilities? Sure, it sounded like it cured death, but a vampire didn't come across that very often.

"If it fell to the wrong hands it could've been twisted, giving the person the ability to cause death." He frowns.

Well that explained it, no wonder both Brendon had wanted to either kill or marry me for it Same goes for William, it made more sense now why he wanted me to join with him or kill me for my abilities. Having a person who could basically kill whoever they wanted would be handy for a vampire with a wish to conquer the whole world. They must have known about the prophecy somehow too, and linked it to me.

I processed what he'd said; confronted with both love and death. So that referred to the almost dying from the wolf's venom? Then love; where had that come in....well Pete had kissed me? Was that it? It sounded kind of stupid, but I was prepared to roll with it. I was almost like my own fairy-tale princess. No, let's not call me that, it reminded me too much of Brendon's taunts.

"So, does that mean you've really been trying to help us?" Pete asked, surprising me. I knew he'd seen Gerard on a few occasions, including now. He must have worked it out as well.

Gerard nodded, "As I tried to tell Cassie all along, things weren't what they seemed. I was merely pretending to work for Brendon so that I could wait for the right moment and ensure he didn't hurt her."

Geez, he went to all that trouble and put up with Brendon for me? I really should've given him a lot more credit. Though, why would he do all this for someone that he barely knew? Despite this ability I wasn't really that special.

"Why did you-" I start to say.

"After I was turned, I wanted to break the curse too." Gerard spoke quickly interrupting me, "In my searches I discovered the prophecy and that lead me to you. There seemed to be enough people directly helping you. So, I decided it would be best to pretend to side with Brendon so that I could alter his actions. I made sure to introduce myself as someone he could trust, and he believed that I knew the way to end the hunter bloods."

Whoa. So how long had he been planning this whole thing? Was that why I'd met him in that alley that night? He hadn't been with Brendon then. Had he been searching for me? Then he'd been with Brendon. That must have been the point where his plan changed. It made sense now why he had told me to keep my friends close but my love even closer. He'd been hinting at it all along, he wanted me to be in this position so that I could break the curse.

"Pete! Cassie!" I heard a voice call, shaking me straight from my thoughts.

I glanced up, spotting two girls with brightly coloured hair standing at the arched doorway that lead out to the balcony. It was Jenna and Hayley who looked sweaty, tired and amazingly human. I couldn't believe it, them too? Did this mean that absolutely everyone who had been turned because of this curse had been cured?

"Oh my gosh, Cassie are you alright?" Hayley called as she raced forward towards us with Jenna trailing behind. Despite everything I must have still looked like a mess kneeling here on the floor with Pete standing in front of me like he was.

"Yeah, I think I am now." I nodded at her.

She glanced between us, her eyes lighting up, "Wait, it happened to you too..."

I nodded, and Pete pointed to me. "It's all thanks to Cassie."

"It wasn't just me, Pete too." I said.

Two extremely confused looks fell on their faces so we went onto explain to the two of them what had happened. Gerard watched silently on.

"Guys!" Someone called out, and standing there on the other end of the balcony was the rest of our group. They must have found another doorway up here to the one Jenna and Hayley had used. I looked around them, no fangs nothing. Everyone it seemed was human again. Unbelievable.

It took another few more minutes to get everyone else caught up on what had happened. The story seemed more unbelievable the more that we told it.

"If we're all human again, then why I can still hear everyone's thoughts though." Taylor frowned when we had finished.

"Yeah, I can still do this." Pete frowned, as he raised his hands up fingers sparking with electricity, looking as equally confused.

We'd all kind of figured they were a vampire thing. I mean, if Andy and Joe were supposed to be hunter bloods too, then why hadn't they shown any abilities themselves?

"Forever hunter bloods then?" Patrick shrugged.

"Anyway, who cares we're humans now! If it means that we still have those awesome powers then we shouldn't be arguing." Hayley smiled.

I nod, "She's right."

"Just Cassie don't go around marrying any randoms." Joe nudged me with a grin.

I knew what he was talking about. We'd told them all about what would happen if I ever married someone who would use my abilities the wrong way. Pete and I exchanged a glance, I don't think we'd be worrying about that problem any time soon.

I heard a loud groan and my eyes found, Brendon still lying there from the impact of Pete throwing him backwards. He pulled himself up, his eyes focused on us. I'd almost forgotten about him, he'd barely made a sound until this point.

"Pete." A desperate voice called. I blinked noticing it was Brendon his voice showing no sign of malice or his usual way of talking. He sounded just like a scared little kid. My first thought was that he was putting it on, but there was something in the way he said it that just sounded way to real.

Pete's eyes seemed to flash with recognition, and he swivelled to face Brendon.

"Brendon?" Pete asked like it was a question. He stood up from his half crouching position, and the two of them locked eyes for a moment. It was like watching two friends who hadn't seen each other for years and years. I guess it was kind of equivalent to that.

Both seemed to hesitate for moment.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened, I didn't really...I-" Brendon started as he began to pull himself up as well. A genuine scream of sorry appeared on his face. It was so different to how I'd seen him before. I couldn't help but see the truth in them. This certainly wasn't Brendon the Dandie who'd helped to destroy our lives.

Pete frowned, and shook his head, "I know it wasn't you."

Brendon's eyes flashed with surprise. "How did you-"

Pete stood up, and shook his head. He held his hand out to him, and helped to pull him up. Then the two of them embraced, the way friends do.

"I missed you, Brendon." Pete said.

*********

A few days later Pete and I took a trip back to the west. As we approached the house I wasn't quite sure what we'd find. Last, I'd seen of her, she'd be holding off a flurry of Dandies with her magical powers. That letter had seemed legit, I mean I had been able to trust Gerard, hadn't I?

I rang on the doorbell. Pete and I stood awkwardly at the door for a few moments. I heard what sounded like a clatter of plates, I strained my ears to listen. My hearing still seemed miles better than before I'd been turned into a vampire, but it had nothing on what I'd been able to hear as one.

The door creaked open, and the witch appeared. Her hair in a curly, messy bun. She wore a colourful rainbow sash on her head. Her smile immediately grew wide when she saw us.

"You did it!" She gasped, looking between us carefully.

"And you're still alive." Pete mumbled from beside me, I promptly jabbed him in the ribs. We'd agreed not to mention that unless she brought it up.

She simply nodded, seeming to ignore Pete's comment, "Come in, both of you!"

Nodding, we followed her into the dining room. The whole place had been fixed up from the hurricane it had become the last time that I'd been here. I noticed that there were already three places set. Had she known we were coming? I was slightly afraid to ask, so I simply did as I was told and took a seat at the table.

"So, what happened?" She asked like a gossipy teenage girl as soon as she had poured two serves of a fragrant lily tea into our cups and we had taken a seat across from us.

Pete and I quickly launched into the story from the point where we'd last seen her. She reacted accordingly, shocked in the right spots. She paused to grab a tissue at one point.

"It's partly thanks to you." I say, as I swirl the teaspoon idly when Pete had finished. "I don't think we would've made it out if it wasn't for you.

"As soon as I saw you, I knew you'd find the way to break it." She nodded, "It was a terrible mistake of mine, I'm glad you found the way to undo it. That red-haired vampire...what was his name? Gerard?"

I nod. There were not enough words to thank that guy for what he did for me.

"Anyway, he came to me talking about it a long time ago. He was ever so determined to find you and assist. I'm glad he came through. He nearly scared me half to death when he told me he was assisting that snooty Brendon kid."

Pete frowned, "Just to make things clear Brendon's not a 'snooty' vampire anymore."

"Of course, of course." The witch waved her hand in the air nonchalantly. "He held the devil's card of the hunter bloods that boy. One of the only ones that's not immune to vampire mind control by their sire. Sensed it right on him when he tried to attack me."

"William died though?" I asked, "So shouldn't it have worn of when we killed William?"

The witch shook her head, "No, no. The bond would've been much stronger than that. If he told him that if something were to happen to him then he would need to take over, for example. The effect would've stayed in place. It's awful really but that's the way things work for those without that ability like yourselves."

"We still do have to look out for Patrick though." Pete shook his head. I knew what he meant, if someone ever found out about Patrick's ability they could easily use it against us again like what had happened with William.

"The only thing that concerns me about what you said is that wolf's venom. What did you say happened with that?" The witch glared at me.

I blinked at her, "What about the wolf's venom? Brendon injected me with it so I guess it was still in my body when I became human right?" I started to process what she was possibly suggesting, so I quickly added, "Wait, will it do anything to me?"

She held my hand, "The wolf venom won't leave you unmarked. It was not dissipated by being cured. It was only a small amount so it shouldn't have too many side effects. It was enough to kill a vampire but wasn't enough to have done too much to you as a human. Like say, make you a werewolf yourself."

I didn't particularly want to go from being one supernatural creature to another. So, I was glad to hear that. It did scare at me the possibility that there were werewolves out there, but I decided to leave that thought alone. I was human, or at least mostly human again and it was awesome.

"Well if that's everything. I guess we better be going." Pete said.

"Thanks for all you help." I nod.

"Psh, you should be thanking Gerard. He did all the helping." She sighed, "I inadvertently put you in that situation. You shouldn't be thanking me."

I shook my head, "You told me to believe him. That was enough."

She nodded, "Well I guess I did. I'm glad the prophecy was correct though."

She'd told him about the prophecy, hadn't she? I decided not to ask too much more.

"Take good care of her." She said, as Pete and I headed for the exit.

Pete nodded, "I will."

"Come visit any time you want, my doors always open." She called as we walked away from her down the path. She gave one final wave.

I guess this was it then, the final piece over. Maybe our lives could go back to normalcy now. It was amazing thinking of a life that could possibly be lead far out of the shadows. Then again, if there were more supernatural creatures like werewolves than maybe everything wasn't truly over. I mean how often did you come across supernatural creatures anyway?

I let out a loud sigh, as another thought crossed my mind "I just realized I never asked her proper name, I guess she's just going to have to be witch lady for-Pete?"

Pete had stopped only a few meters in front of me.

"Shit." He muttered, and I blinked, what was his problem. I followed his gaze along to a small grey furred wolf standing only a few meters away from us.

Pete expression was one that someone might use if they were about to take on a whole hoard of zombies. For some reason I, on the other hand wasn't afraid of him. He didn't look like he was trying to hurt us. In fact, it almost looked like he was staring at me.

The wolf trotted forward towards me, and Pete slowly inched away to slightly behind me. He was petrified. I stayed right where I was. This was the strangest thing I'd ever seen.

"Hey, little guy." I spoke down to him.

He inched closer, before seeming to nudge at my pant leg. He wanted me to pat him, didn't he? I keeled down to its level, allowing myself to stroke the little wolf's fur. I guess after being injected with wolf venom it kind of gave me certain affinity towards them. I could feel Pete's eyes on me watching my every move. I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious.

I looked up at him sheepishly, geez he could fight down a million vampires but a wolf terrified him, "He won't hurt you Pete."

Pete glance back at me skeptically but hesitantly he reached down, and joined me. Patting the little guy. That nuzzled at him like he was an old friend. We stayed there for a few moments.

I heard a small yelp, and the tiny wolf looked slightly alarmed. He cocked his head side wards, and I followed his gaze to a larger wolf. Almost a giant grown up version of this little one. The larger wolf glanced at me, and I could've sworn that it nodded. Almost in an approving way. The smaller wolf gave one slight lick of my finger before bouncing off back over to the larger wolf.

"Healing tears and being able to talk to wolves, I don't know how to keep up with you, Cass." Pete said, bringing me back to reality.

I glanced back up at him, and pull a face, "Hey, you can still electric shock people. I wouldn't call you exactly easy to keep up with either."

"Good point." He grins, before gesturing to the place where the wolf had just been, "What does all this make you I wonder?"

"Human" I say. "You heard what she said the wolf venom didn't make me like werewolf or anything similar, it just left a mark on me. Now I can talk to the wolves that's probably about all."

"Wolf whisperer then?" He grins playfully.

"Shut up, Pete." I say with a playful push.

"Well I was thinking after our dramatic kind of corny kiss, that perhaps we should make things official...but maybe I've changed my mind now."

I blink at him, I can't believe my ears. Did he just say what I think he just did?

"Make it official?" He nods, "Pete are you asking me out?"

He shrugs, "I guess I am?"

"In that case I say hell yes." I grin at him as we pull into a final kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that happened. XD


	20. Epilogue (Ready To Go

A few summers later, I sit in the wings of the stage on a large black equipment box, watching on as one of my favourite bands takes on the world. Brendon sits beside me. If you'd told me a few years ago I'd be glad to be this close to him I would've laughed. I mean once upon a time he did try and kill me on more than occasion after all. Yet here we were, sitting side by side like old friends. Ten years have passed now and it's crazy to think how much our lives had changed.

For starters Jenna had returned to Australia a few years ago, and was always sending us funny pictures from her travels around it. I missed her, she was planning on coming back to the states sometime soon and I was looking forward to seeing her again. Alex was still around, him and his friends were doing their own thing. Surprisingly also in music. Then there was the rest of us that were here tonight.

"They're almost done, are they coming?" I ask Brendon, with a quick glance at the stage before me. I knew they were but it always worried me when they did this. I didn't want to see the riot on twitter if they didn't play.

He shrugs, sharing none of my worry, "It's them remember, they'll turn up in the wings like five minutes before their part of the concert starts. Just in the nick of time. There's not much change over times tonight so maybe they might miss it. It'll be their fault though, I tried to warn them."

"Right." I agree. "I mean you're here already so they can't exactly blame you."

"I'm always on time, though." He rolls his eyes, "Those four are always late."

"True, true." I grin.

"Mummy!" A voice yelled impatiently as something pulled with just as much insistence on my pant leg.

I looked down to find my daughter. Curly red hair and big eyes were Annie's key features. She'd picked up a few crazy abilities, she could run faster than most kids her age, she can change the colour of her eyes at will. I still think that it must have been from the wolf venom, even after all these years but Pete doesn't believe me. We're certain she's a hunter blood herself. She keeps asking to train with us. I keep trying to tell her, not until she's older. I've seen Pete trying to teach her a thing or two, much to my dismay that he's teaching her any of this so soon. A six-year-old should not be learning how to stake a vampire. At least she seems to be evenly matched with him despite her size. She's stubborn as anything, I think I know who she gets it from.

You'd think we'd have given up being hunters now that we were all humans again. Who could've known that there were so many more supernatural creatures out there that sometimes needed to be taken down a notch. With all the constant travelling from touring we seemed to bump into them a lot more often than you'd think. We hadn't been the only kind of Vampires around as only those affected by the curse had been cured by Pete and I's kiss.

So, we needed to keep training; just in case. I was basically a roadie these days, following the band around as they went. Taking down the odd out of line creature when we needed to. I hated coming up against vampires though, it always reminded me of what could've been. Most of these groups had the same mentality as the Dandies once had. It was like facing a nightmare repeatedly. Yet, I knew what we were doing was good if we could save even one more person from the fate that we could've all had it made be glad we did it.

"And in case you hadn't already heard we are Paramore!" Hayley yells from the stage, her orange hair almost luminescent under the harsh stage lights. She stands in front of hundreds of screaming and adoring fans. It was amazing to see how quickly they'd grown over the last few years. Who would've thought that picking up some instruments while watching the guys play would inspire all of this.

"Goodnight everybody!" She yells, to even more applause as the stage grows darker.

I see her give one final bow before bouncing off the stage.

"Cassie! Annie!" She yells excitedly as she catches sight of us, as she approaches outside of the stage, she goes for a hug before frowning, "Wait, I'm too sweaty for this."

We high five instead. She leans down, and Annie pats her hair. She adores Hayley's hair. It's bright orange now and looks amazing. It's starting to fade as the tour goes on, but it's still impressive.

"You haven't been causing your mummy any trouble back here, have you?" She grins at the small girl as she pulls her hair away from her.

Annie's eyes widen and she whispers something to Hayley. I frown, what on earth is she doing?

"That's okay I won't tell her if you don't." Hayley grins back.

"Hey!" I yell at them, pretending to be mad.

"Nothing serious." She grins.

Taylor and Hayley's other band mates come off stage next and Annie races over to him, I guess her next victims. I let her go, she's kind of like everyone's daughter around here so I know she'll be fine.

I watch as the crew quickly scrambles to change over the equipment for the next band. I look out into the crowd dressed in band shirts and armed with massive posters asking to play a certain song or for one of the members to marry them. It always makes me laugh a little the effort that some people go to for these signs.

When I look into the crowd, it reminds me that I hadn't talked to my brother in years, the whole vampire thing had kind of messed up any kind of family relationship between us. Even though Brendon was friends with us, my brother refused to associate with any of us. I will still never know why he agreed to what he did, and honestly Brendon doesn't remember. I think he still hates us for curing the world of all the vampires related to the curse that was placed on William, Alex and Jenna all those years ago. I guess he had really wanted to be a vampire after all. We'd taken all that away from him.

"I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost Wentz." Hayley called down the stage stairs behind me.

I turn to find Pete, Patrick, Andy and Joe walking up the stairs together. Annie appears out of nowhere racing straight up to Pete holding her arms out. Pete leans down, and gives her a hug.

I smile, it's the cutest thing ever. Annie quickly herds up the other guys ensuring that they are not forgotten either.

"She has them wrapped around her little finger." Pete smiles as he comes to stand beside me.

"She sure does." I shake my head as Andy is made to surrender one of his drumsticks.

"Good luck." I smile, as we kiss.

"Come on you lovebirds, we have a show to perform." Joe shakes his head at us, as he and Patrick drag Pete away from me and out onto the stage. I give them a quick wave.

I return to my original spot by the side of the stage sitting on one of the equipment boxes, Annie comes and sits beside me still clutching the drumstick she seized from Andy. She taps it idly on the box her eyes now focused on the stage.

My attention falls there, into the blackness as the intro speech starts playing. They pull on masks. I can't help but smile. All of this was almost taken away from them. No matter how many times I watch them play I just feel so glad that they can do so. The bars of a newer song come blasting out from the speakers and the stage erupts into a burst of dramatic flashing colour and smoke before Patrick begins to sing.

 _'Put on your war paint_  
  
You are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down  
Strike a match and I'll burn you to the ground  
We are the jack-o-lanterns in July  
Setting fire to the sky  
He-here comes this rising tide  
So come on  
  
Put on your war paint'

Eventually the first song is over and Brendon's about to go on stage with them. I give him quick thumbs up and he grins back.

"Knock em dead, Brendon." I smile, pushing him out onto the stage to sing with the guys.

The crowd cheers loudly as he walks out there, they always love when he sings as well. I don't blame them, he's an amazing singer. Sometimes I start to think that I'm the only hunter blood with pretty much no musical talent.

Life certainly didn't turn out the way I planned it. It came and pushed me out into it at a time I thought I was destined to a life of making coffees for night owls every night, but sometimes miracles do happen after all. Looking back now, I probably could've gone without that few months of my life, but then again, I wouldn't be standing here watching my friends take on the world. Somehow, I guess that seemed like a fair trade.

"Long live the car crash hearts!" I hear the crowd sing along to the song.

I smile, that was one thing I could agree with for sure.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All done! :D
> 
> A massive huge thank you to everyone that has been supporting this series. Every comment and fave has absolutely made my day and kept me writing. I hoped you enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> This was my first ever fan-fiction and series that I ever finished. I originally worked on this story in some form or another for about three years and have just done a major edit as I've been posting it here.
> 
> Keep your eyes peeled as their will most likely still be some short stories after this related to this series. (There is one I'm posting right after this)
> 
> In terms of other things that I've written besides this, I'm almost finished called, 'The Sun Will Rise' which is a 5 Seconds Of Summer, werewolf AU that is posted on the other half of my account (where all the 5SOS related stuff will be going) and 'We Are Outsiders' a Fall Out Boy x Against The Current crossover based on the 'In Our Bones' Music videos and the Youngblood Chronicles which will be posted on this half. (Basically all my Paramore/FOB/ Other band relates things will be going) So please check them out if you're interested! 
> 
> Thanks once again for reading! ^^


	21. Short Story: The (After) Life Of The Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little short story told from Pete's point of view of the night he met Hayley! I never got a chance to explain this properly in the main story. I originally posted it to celebrate the first book reaching 6K views on Wattpad! So, enjoy this first little side story! :)

It was finally done.

Our album was complete and in just two months we'd be unleashing it on the world. I couldn't wait for people to hear it, but then again, I was so nervous about what they might think. Sure, I thought Patrick's vocals sounded even more amazing on this album than our first, and Joe and Andy were becoming so talented musically as well. And my lyrics? Well they were probably just getting weirder, everyone insisted they were cool though. Even though Patrick and I had bickered for half an hour about the way the chorus should go for Sugar... Damn, maybe we should go back and fix that song again.

"Pete, quit brooding!" A voice called, and I suddenly felt myself being dragged forward into the swarming crowd of people that were dancing to the loud song on the club's p.a. system. It had been Brendon, the hopeless romantic of our little group, he wasn't in our band, but he could sing so he'd done some guest vocals for us. "We're here to celebrate; not stand to the side and stare into space."

"I'm fine." I give him a smile, as I yell over the music. "See I'm celebrating."

Brendon rolls his eyes, and yells back, "Come on, liar."

He was right, I was lying. It wasn't my fault that I wasn't in the mood for this tonight. I couldn't help but think we'd messed up and that there were a hundred more things that needed to be done to that album. It didn't really feel finished. Yet the producer, and the rest of the guys insisted it was perfect.

"Hey, is that Patrick over there? He looks a little bored" I say, pointing vaguely off into the distance, even though he was nowhere to be found, "Why don't you go talk to him?"

As I'd hoped, Brendon turned his head in that direction. Seeing my chance, I quickly darted off, letting myself get lost in the crowd of people. I made a quick glance behind as Brendon went searching for me. I hunched down into the shadows so he wouldn't find me again. A lot better.

When I was sure he was gone, I stood up and took a few steps backwards, my back colliding with something and then I heard a girlish scream. I turned to find a girl behind me covered in drink. I grimaced, I'd run into her, hadn't I? It was fine to accidentally spill something on someone on accident if it only got their shoes, but much more than that and you could raise a whole lot of problems.

"I'm so sorry, I-" I say to her, hesitating on the spot.

"No problem, jerk." She growled, as she angrily picked up the bottle and stormed away towards the bathroom before I could even help her.

I sighed, girls could be so weird sometimes. I was only trying to help.

"Your friends right though why bother coming if you're going to stand by the wall all night?" A girl spoke from beside me. Her hair pulled up into ponytails that were tied with glow in the dark ribbons. She wore a black leather dress with knee-high stockings that made her look like a cyber punk. She wore thick eyeliner that made winged curves at the edge of her eyelids. She was kind of cute.

"Ah-" I attempted to come up with a witty answer. I guess she must've heard all that with Brendon before.

"It's okay I understand." She grinned, flipping her left ponytail aimlessly with her finger. "I'm more of an observer myself."

Well I wouldn't really say that, but tonight for some reason I didn't really feel like partying. I stayed talking to her for a little while. She was friendly enough, and it was better than being pestered by Brendon that I wasn't having a good enough time.

"I know just the thing, come outside with me and we'll get some fresh air," She grinned suddenly, dragging my hand and me forward towards her and the door.

I looked back to the guys, Brendon was talking to a girl and the other three were shuffling around awkwardly among the crowd. I'd be back, soon right?

As we left the thumping beats of the main part of the club behind, I found myself in an empty graffiti filled alleyway, the reek of garbage hitting my nose. This was like the least unromantic place.

Before I could realise, she was over me, she had me pressed against the wall. I expected her to go for my lips but instead she went for my neck, I pulled backwards trying to get away from her but I found myself pressed against the wall. She fell into my arms before falling to the ground. I glanced down as blood seeped from her back. What the heck? Had I just watched a girl get murdered right before my eyes? Was I going to be next? I wanted to scream, but instead I take a step backwards and run into the wall behind me.

"Aren't you even going to say thanks, Emo fringe?"

I looked up, to find a dark auburn red-haired girl stood in-front of me. She smiled, as she tucked what looked to be a stake into her back pack. There was a hint of blood over her hands, had this small girl been the one that had killed her?

"It's not an Emo fringe!" I yelled at her, how dare she say something like that to me.

"Sure, looks like one..." She shrugged, her tone half teasing.

"What are you doing out here anyway?" I asked her uncertainly, though I couldn't expect her to own up to being a murderer. Especially if she was probably about to kill me next. "What did you do that for?"

"Channelling my inner Buffy or something like that." She shrugged.

Buffy? Buffy was that Vampire slaying girl wasn't she. Someone tried to get me to watch an episode of it once, I don't remember much more of it though.

"What like killing vampires? Come on, that girl wasn't even a vampire, they don't exist." I say firmly.

She rolled her eyes, "You must be dense, that girl you were just fawning over was in fact a vampire, one second later and you would've been dead, or a vampire most likely."

Great, this girl was a delusional psychopath. She really appeared to believe that vampires were real.

"You're joking, right?"

She rolled her eyes and bent forward, pulling up the gum of the girl who she'd just killed. Revealing elongated incisors. "Now do you believe me?"

I stepped backwards, everything suddenly seeming so real. "Who are you anyway?"

"Hayley Williams. And you?"

"Pete Wentz."

We stared at each other for a few moments. She moved her hand awkwardly before pulling out a strange kind of golden powder and pouring it over the vampire. As the powder touched its skin it seemed to disintegrate into a pile of dust.

I blinked, "What the hell was that?"

She shrugged, "It's a special kind of powder for destroying the evidence."

I was about to ask her more when I hear someone yell, "Found her!"

She spun around, instantly. Four guys appeared from out of the shadows, dressed almost in black. It was hard to distinguish faces, but they were perhaps only a few years younger than we were.

"Hayley, what are you doing? I thought we were supposed to be sticking together tonight?" One of them yelled at her, he looked tired and cross.

"Nothing much, I saw a vampire come out of the club and followed them." She smiled at them, gesturing to the small pile of ash on the ground beside her. They seemed to back down at that. Then she turned to me, "See you around.... Pete."

She walked away, the four guys walking alongside her. One of them gave me a dirty stare, as he put his arm around her. Man, was he overprotective. I wondered if that was her boyfriend or something.

Deciding to forget about vampires I returned to the guys in the party.

"Pete, where were you? We thought you'd been kidnapped or something!" Patrick yelled, a few seconds after I entered. "We've been looking for you everywhere."

"Uh, I...."

Well I had been attacked but I couldn't tell Patrick about Hayley or the Vampires. They would think I was crazy. Maybe I was? I'd seen something tonight and there was no normal explanation for it. I hoped I'd see Hayley again though, the girl had me intrigued.


End file.
